CHAETISM 


BT 

THOMAS 


"It  never  smokes  but  there  is  fire."— Old  Proverb 


CHICAGO,  NEW  YORK,  AND  SAN  FRANCISCO: 

BELFORD,  CLARKE  &  CO., 
Publishers, 


TROWS 
BOOKBINDING  COMPANY, 
NEW  YORK. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Chap.  I.  Condition-of -England  Question,         ....  5 

II.  Statistics,        ........  11 

III.  New  Poor-Law,  ........  15 

IV.  Finest  Peasantry  in  the  World,  ....  21 
V.  Rights  and  Mights,   30 

VI.  Laissez-Faire,  ........  39 

VII.  Not  Laissez-Faire,       .    49 

VIII.  New  Eras,   53 

IX.  Parliamentary  Radicalism,         .               ...  68 

X.  Impossible,   72 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2014 


https://archive.org/details/chartismOOcarl_0 


CHARTISM  * 


CHAPTER  I. 

CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND  QUESTION. 

A  feeling  very  generally  exists  that  the  condition  and  dis- 
position of  the  working  Classes  is  a  rather  ominous  matter  at 
present  ;  that  something  ought  to  be  said,  something  ought 
to  be  done,  in  regard  to  it.  And  surely  at  an  epoch  of  his- 
tory when  the  6  National  Petition  '  carts  itself  in  waggons  along 
the  streets,  and  is  presented  'bound  with  iron  hoops,  four 
men  bearing  it,'  to  a  Reformed  House  of  Commons  ;  and 
Chartism  numbered  by  the  million  and  half,  taking  nothing 
by  its  iron-hooped  Petition,  breaks  out  into  brickbats,  cheap 
pikes,  and  even  into  sputterings  of  conflagration,  such  very 
general  feeling  cannot  be  considered  unnatural !  To  us  individ- 
ually this  matter  appears,  and  has  for  many  years  appeared, 
to  be  the  most  ominous  of  all  practical  matters  whatever  ; 
matter  in  regard  to  which  if  something  be  not  done,  something 
will  do  itself  one  day,  and  in  a  fashion  that  will  please  nobody. 
The  time  is  verily  come  for  acting  in  it ;  how  much  more  for 
consultation  about  acting  in  it,  for  speech  and  articulate  in- 
quiry about  it ! 

We  are  aware  that,  according  to  the  newspapers,  Chartism 
is  extinct ;  that  a  Reformed  Ministry  has  '  put  down  the 
chimera  of  Chartism '  in  the  most  felicitous  effectual  manner. 
So  say  the  newspapers  ; — and  yet,  alas,  most  readers  of  news- 
papers know  withal  that  it  is  indeed  the  '  chimera  '  of  Chartism, 
not  the  reality,  which  has  been  put  down.  The  distracted  in- 
coherent embodiment  of  Chartism,  whereby  in  late  months  it 
*  First  published  in  January,  1840. 


CHARTISM. 


took  shape  and  became  visible,  this  has  been  put  down  ;  or 
rather  has  fallen  down  and  gone  asunder  by  gravitation  and  law 
of  nature  ;  but  the  living  essence  of  Chartism  has  not  been  put 
down.  Chartism  means  the  bitter  discontent  grown  fierce  and 
mad,  the  wrong  condition  therefore  or  the  wrong  disposition,  of 
the  Working  Classes  of  England.  It  is  a  new  name  for  a  thing 
which  has  had  many  names,  and  which  will  yet  have  many.  The 
matter  of  Chartism  is  weighty,  deep-rooted,  far  extending  ;  did 
not  begin  yesterday  ;  will  by  no  means  end  this  day  or  to-mor- 
row. Reform  Ministry,  constabulary  rural  police,  new.  levy  of 
soldiers,  grants  of  money  to  Birmingham  ;  all  this  is  well,  or 
is  not  well ;  all  this  will  put  down  only  the  embodiment  or 
'  chimera '  of  Chartism.  The  essence  continuing,  new  and 
ever  new  embodiments,  chimeras  madder  or  less  mad,  have  to 
continue.  The  melancholy  fact  remains,  that  this  thing  known 
at  present  by  the  name  Chartism  does  exist,  has  existed  ;  and, 
either  'put  down/  into  secret  treason,  with  rusty  pistols,  vit- 
riol-bottle and  match-box,  or  openly  brandishing  pike  and 
torch  (one  knows  not  in  which  case  more  fatal-looking),  is  like 
to  exist  till  quite  other  methods  have  been  tried  with  it. 
What  means  this  bitter  discontent  of  the  Working  Classes? 
Wlience  comes  it,  whither  goes  it  ?  Above  at  what  price, 
on  what  terms,  will  it  probably  consent  to  depart  from  us  and 
die  into  rest  ?    These  are  questions. 

To  say  that  it  is  mad,  incendiary,  nefarious,  is  no  answer. 
To  say  all  this,  in  never  so  many  dialects,  is  saying  little. 
*  Glasgow  Thuggery,'  'Glasgow  Thugs;'  it  is  a  witty  nick- 
name :  the  practice  of  '  Number  60 '  entering  his  dark  room, 
to  contract  for  and  settle  the  price  of  blood  with  operative 
assassins,  in  a  Christian  city,  once  distinguished  by  its  rigorous 
Christianism,  is  doubtless  a  fact  worthy  of  all  horror  :  but 
what  wffl  horror  do  for  it  ?  What  will  execration  ;  nay  at 
bottom  what  will  condemnation  and  banishment  to  Botany 
Bay  do  for  it  ?  Glasgow  Thuggery,  Chartist  torch-meetings, 
Birmingham  riots,  Swing  conflagrations,  are  so  many  symp- 
toms on  the  surface  ;  you  abolish  the  symptom  to  no  purpose, 
if  the  disease  is  left  untouched.  Boils  on  the  surface  are  cur- 
able or  incurable, — small  matter  which,  while  the  virulent 


C 0NDIT1  ON- OF- MNG LAND  QUESTION.  7 

humour  festers  deep  within  ;  poisoning  the  source  of  life  ; 
and  certain  enough  to  find  for  itself  ever  new  boils  and  sore 
issues  ;  ways  of  announcing  that  it  continues  there,  that  it 
would  fain  not  continue  there. 

Delirious  Chartism  will  not  have  raged  entirely  to  .no  pur- 
pose, as  indeed  no  earthly  thing  does  so,  if  it  have  forced  all 
thinking  men  of  the  commuuity  to  think  of  this  vital  matter,  too 
apt  to  be  overlooked  otherwise.  Is  the  condition  of  the  Eng- 
lish working  people  wrong ;  so  wrong  that  rational  working 
men  cannot,  will  not,  -and  even  should  not  rest  quiet  under  it  ? 
A  most  grave  case,  complex  beyond  all  others  in  the  world  ; 
a  case  wherein  Botany  Bay,  constabulary  rural  police,  and 
such  like,  will  avail  but  little.  Or  is  the  discontent  itself  mad, 
like  the  shape  it  took  ?  Not  the  condition  of  the  working  peo- 
ple that  is  wrong  ;  but  their  disposition,  their  own  thoughts, 
beliefs  and  feelings  that  are  wrong?  This  too  were  a  most 
grave  case,  little  less  alarming,  little  less  complex,  than  the 
former  one.  In  this  case  too,  where  constabulary  police  and 
mere  rigour  of  coercion  seems  more  at  home,  coercion  will  by 
no  means  do  all,  coercion  by  itself  will  not  even  do  much.  If 
there  do  exist  general  madness  of  discontent,  then  sanity  and 
some  measure  of  content  must  be  brought  about  again, — not 
by  constabulary  police  alone.  When  the  thoughts  of  a  people, 
in  the  great  mass  of  it,  have  grown  mad,  the  combined  issue 
of  that  people's  workings  will  be  a  madness,  an  incoherency 
and  ruin !  Sanity  will  have  to  be  recovered  for  the  general 
mass  ;  coercion  itself  will  otherwise  cease  to  be  able  to  coerce. 

We  have  heard  it  asked,  Why  Parliament  throws  no  light 
on  this  question  of  the  Working  Classes,  and  the  condition  or 
disposition  they  are  in  ?  Truly  to  a  remote  observer  of  Par- 
liamentary procedure  it  seems  surprising,  especially  in  late 
Reformed  times,  to  see  what  space  this  question  occupies  in 
the  Debates  of  the  Nation.  Can  any  other  business  whatso- 
ever be  so  pressing  on  legislators  ?  A  Reformed  Parliament, 
one  would  think,  should  inquire  into  popular  discontents  be- 
fore they  get  the  length  of  pikes  and  torches  !  For  what  end 
at  all  are  men,  Honourable  Members  and  Reform  Members, 
sent  to  St.  Stephen's,  with  clamour  and  effort  ;  kept  talking, 


8 


CHARTISM. 


struggling,  motioning  and  counter  motioning?  The  condition 
of  the  great  body  of  people  in  a  country  is  the  condition  of 
the  country  itself  :  this  you  would  say  is  a  truism  in  all  times  ; 
a  truism  rather  pressing  to  get  recognised  as  a  truth  now, 
and  be  acted  upon,  in  these  times.  Yet  read  Hansard's  De- 
bates, or  the  Morning  Papers,  if  you  have  nothing  to  do ! 
The  old  grand  question,  whether  A  is  to  be  in  office  or  B, 
with  the  innumerable  subsidiary  questions  growing  out  of 
that,  courting  paragraphs  and  suffrages  for  a  blessed  solution 
of  that :  Canada  question,  Irish  Appropriation  question,  "West 
India  question,  Queen's  Bedchamber  question  ;  Game  Laws, 
Usury  Laws  ;  African  Blacks,  Hill  Coolies,  Smithfield  cattle, 
and  Dog-carts, — all  manner  of  questions  and  subjects,  except 
simply  this  the  alpha  and  omega  of  all !  Surely  Honourable 
Members  ought  to  speak  of  the  Condition-of-England  ques- 
tion too.  Radical  Members,  above  all ;  friends  of  the  people  ; 
chosen  with  effort,  by  the  people,  to  intrepret  and  articulate 
the  dumb  deep  want  of  the  people  !  To  a  remote  observer 
they  seem  oblivious  of  their  duty.  Are  they  not  there,  by 
trade,  mission,  and  express  appointment  of  themselves  and 
others,  to  speak  for  the  good  of  the  British  Nation  ?  What- 
soever great  British  interest  can  the  least  speak  for  itself,  for 
that  beyond  all  they  are  called  to  speak.  They  are  either 
speakers  for  that  great  dumb  toiling  class  which  cannot  speak, 
or  they  are  nothing  that  one  can  well  specify. 

Alas,  the  remote  observer  knows  not  the  nature  of  Parlia- 
ments :  how  Parliaments,  extant  there  for  the  British  Nation's 
sake,  find  that  they  are  extant  withal  for  their  own  sake  ;  how 
Parliaments  travel  so  naturally,  in  their  deep-rutted  routine, 
common-place  worn  into  ruts  axle-deep,  from  which  only 
strength,  insight  and  courageous  generous  exertion  can  lift 
any  Parliament  or  vehicle  ;  how  in  Parliaments,  Reformed  or 
Unreformed,  there  may  chance  to  be  a  strong  man,  an  origi- 
nal, clear-sighted,  great  hearted,  patient  and  valiant  man,  or 
there  may  chance  be  to  none  such  ; — how,  on  the  whole,  Parlia- 
ments, lumbering  along  in  their  deep  ruts  of -common-place, 
find,  as  so  many  of  us  otherwise  do,  that  the  ruts  are  axle- 
deep,  and  the  travelling  very  toilsome  of  itself,  and  for  the 


CONDITION- OF-ENGLAND  Q  UE8TI0N. 


9 


day  the  evil  thereof  sufficient !  What  Parliaments  ought  to 
have  done  in  this  business,  what  they  will,  can  or  cannot  yet 
do,  and  where  the  limits  of  their  faculty  and  culpability  may 
lie,  in  regard  to  it,  were  a  long  investigation  ;  into  which  wa 
need  not  enter  at  this  moment,  What  they  have  done  is.unhap- 
pily  plain  enough.  Hitherto,  on  this  most  national  of  ques- 
tions, the  Collective  Wisdom  of  the  Nation  has  availed  us  as 
good  as  nothing  whatever. 

And  yet,  as  we  say,  it  is  a  question  which  cannot  be  left  to 
the  Collective  Folly  of  the  Nation  !  In  or  out  of  Parliament, 
darkness,  neglect,  hallucination  must  contrive  to  cease  in  re- 
gard to  it ;  true  insight  into  it  must  be  had.  How  inexpress- 
ibly useful  were  true  insight  into  it  ;  a  genuine  understanding 
by  the  upper  classes  of  society  what  it  is  that  the  under  classes 
intrinsically  mean  ;  a  clear  interpretation  of  the  thought  which 
at  heart  torments  these  wild  inarticulate  souls,  struggling 
there,  with  inarticulate  uproar,  like  dumb  creatures  in  pain, 
unable  to  speak  what  is  in  them  !  Something  they  do  mean  ; 
some  true  thing  withal,  in  the  centre  of  their  confused  hearts, 
— for  they  are  hearts  created  by  Heaven  too  :  to  the  Heaven 
it  is  clear  what  thing  ;  to  us  not  clear.  Would  that  it  were  ! 
Perfect  clearness  on  it  were  equivalent  to  remedy  of  it.  For, 
as  is  well  said,  all  battle  is  misunderstanding  ;  did  the  parties 
know  one  another,  the  battle  would  cease.  No  man  at  bot- 
tom means  injustice  ;  it  is  always  for  some  obscure  distorted 
image  of  aright  that  he  contends  :  an  obscure  image  diffracted, 
exaggerated,  in  the  wonderfullest  way,  by  natural  dimness  and 
selfishness  ;  getting  tenfold  more  diffracted  by  exasperation 
of  contest,  till  at  length  it  become  all  but  irrecognisable  ;  yet 
still  the  image  of  a  right.  Could  a  man  own  to  himself  that 
the  thing  he  fought  for  was  wrong,  contrary  to  fairness  and 
the  law  of  reason,  he  would  own  also  that  it  thereby  stood  con- 
demned and  hopeless  ;  he  could  fight  for  it  no  longer.  Nay 
independently  of  right,  could  the  contending  parties  get  but 
accurately  to  discern *one  another's  might  and  strength  to  con- 
tend, the  one  would  peaceably  yield  to  the  other  and  to  Ne- 
cessity ;  the  contest  in  this  case  too  were  over.  No  African 
expedition  now,  as  in  the  days  of  Herodotus,  is  fitted  out 


10 


CHARTISM. 


against  the  South-wind.  One  expedition  was  satisfactory  in 
that  department.  The  South-wind  Simoom  continues  blow- 
ing occasionally,  hateful  as  ever,  maddening  as  ever  ;  but  one 
expedition  was  enough.  Do  we  not  all  submit  to  Death  ? 
The  highest  sentence  of  the  law,  sentence  of  death,  is  passed 
on  all  of  us  by  the  fact  of  birth  ;  yet  we  live  patiently  under 
it,  patiently  undergoing  it  when  the  hour  comes.  Clear  un- 
deniable right,  clear  undeniable  might  :  either  of  these  once 
ascertained  puts  an  end  to  battle.  All  battle  is  a  confused  ex- 
periment to  ascertain  one  and  both  of  these. 

What  are  the  rights,  what  are  the  mights  of  the  discon- 
tented Working  Classes  in  England  at  this  epoch  ?  He  were 
an  GEdipus,  and  deliverer  from  sad  social  pestilence,  who 
could  resolve  us  fully  !  For  we  may  say  beforehand,  The 
struggle  that  divides  the  upper  and  lower  in  society  over  Eu- 
rope, and  more  painfully  and  notably  in  England  than  else- 
where, this  too  is  a  struggle  which  will  end  and  adjust  itself 
as  all  other  struggles  do  and  have  done,  by  making  the  right 
clear  and  the  might  clear  ;  not  otherwise  than  by  that.  Mean- 
time, the  questions,  Why  are  the  Working  Classes  discon- 
tented ;  what  is  their  condition,  economical,  moral,  in  their 
houses  and  their  hearts,  as  it  is  in  reality  and  as  they  figure 
it  to  themselves  to  be  ;  what  do  they  complain  of ;  what  ought 
they,  and  ought  they  not  to  complain  of  ? — these  are  measur- 
able questions  ;  on  some  of  these  any  common  mortal,  did  he 
but  turn  his  eyes  to  them,  might  throw  some  light.  Certain 
researches  and  considerations  of  ours  on  the  matter,  since  no 
one  else  will  undertake  it,  are  now  to  be  made  public.  The 
researches  have  yielded  us  little,  almost  nothing  ;  but  the  con- 
siderations are  of  old  date,  and  press  to  have  utterance.  We 
are  not  without  hope  that  our  general  notion  of  the  business, 
if  we  can  get  it  uttered  at  all,  will  meet  some  assent  from 
many  candid  men. 


STATISTICS. 


11 


CHAPTEE  II. 

STATISTICS. 

A  witty  statesman  said  you  might  prove  anything  by  figures. 
We  have  looked  into  various  statistic  works,  Statistic-Society 
Beports,  Poor-Law  Keports,  Keports  and  Pamphlets  not  a  few, 
with  a  sedulous  eye  to  this  question  of  the  Working  Classes 
and  their  general  condition  in  England  ;  we  grieve  to  say, 
with  as  good  as  no  result  whatever.  Assertion  swallows  asser- 
tion ;  according  to  the  old  Proverb,  c  as  the  statist  thinks,  the 
bell  clinks  ! '  Tables  are  like  cobwebs,  like  the  sieve  of  the 
Danaides ;  beautifully  reticulated,  orderly  to  look  upon,  but 
which  will  hold  no  conclusion.  Tables  are  abstractions,  and 
the  object  a  most  concrete  one,  so  difficult  to  read  the  essence 
of.  There  are  innumerable  circumstances  ;  and  one  circum- 
stance left  out  may  be  the  vital  one  on  which  all  turned. 
Statistics  is  a  science  which  ought  to  be  honourable,  the  basis 
of  many  most  important  sciences  ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  carried 
on  by  steam,  this  science,  any  more  than '  others  are  ;  a  wise 
head  is  requisite  for  carrying  it  on.  Conclusive  facts  are  in- 
separable from  inconclusive  except  by  a  head  that  already 
understands  and  knows.  Vain  to  send  the  purblind  and  blind 
to  the  shore  of  a  Pactolus  never  so  golden  :  these  find  only 
gravel ;  the  seer  and  finder  alone  picks  up  gold  grains  there. 
And  now  the  purblind  offering  you,  with  asseveration  and 
protrusive  importunity,  his  basket  of  gravel  as  gold,  what  steps 
are  to  be  taken  with  him  ? — Statistics,  one  may  hope,  will  im- 
prove gradually,  and  become  good  for  something.  Meanwhile 
it  is  to  be  feared,  the  crabbed  satirist  was  partly  right,  as 
things  go  :  '  A  judicious  man,' says  he,  '  looks  at  Statistics, 
'  not  to  get  knowledge,  but  to  save  himself  from  having  igno- 
'  ranee  foisted  on  him/  With  what  serene  conclusiveness  a 
member  of  some  Useful-Knowledge  Society  stops  your  mouth 
with  a  figure  of  arithmetic  !  To  him  it  seems  he  has  there  ex- 
tracted the  elixir  of  the  matter,  on  which  now  nothing  more 
can  be  said.  It  is  needful  that  you  look  into  his  said  extracted 


12  CHARTISM. 

elixir  ;  and  ascertain,  alas,  too  probably,  not  without  a  sigh, 
that  it  is  wash  and  vapidity,  good  only  for  the  gutters. 

Twice  or  three  times  have  we  heard  the  lamentations  and 
prophecies  of  a  humane  Jeremiah,  mourner  for  the  poor,  cut 
short  by  a  statistic  fact  of  the  most  decisive  nature  :  How  can 
the  condition  of  the  poor  be  other  than  good,  be  other  than 
better  ;  has  not  the  average  duration  of  life  in  England,  and 
therefore  among  the  most  numerous  class  in  England,  been 
proved  to  have  increased  ?  Our  Jeremiah  had  to  admit  that, 
if  so,  it  was  an  astounding  fact ;  whereby  all  that  ever  he,  for 
his  part,  had  observed  on  other  sides  of  the  matter  was  overset 
without  remedy.  If  life  last  longer,  life  must  be  less  worn 
upon,  by  outward  suffering,  by  inward  discontent,  by  hardship 
of  any  kind  ;  the  general  condition  of  the  poor  must  be  bet- 
tering instead  of  worsening.  So  was  our  Jeremiah  cut  short. 
And  now  for  the  ( proof  ? '  Readers  who  are  curious  in  statistic 
proofs  may  see  it  drawn  out  with  all  solemnity,  in  a  Pamphlet 
4  published  by  Charles  Knight  and  Company,'  * — and  perhaps 
himself  draw  inferences  from  it ;  Northampton  Tables,  com- 
piled by  Dr.  Price  '  from  registers  of  the  Parish  of  All  Saints 
from  1735  to  1780  ;'  Carlisle  Tables,  collected  by  Dr.  Hey- 
sham  from  observation  of  Carlisle  City  for  eight  years,  ■  the 
calculations  founded  on  them '  conducted  by  another  Doctor ; 
incredible  6  document  considered  satisfactory  by  men  of  sci- 
ence in  France  : ' — alas,  is  it  not  as  if  some  zealous  scientific 
son  of  Adam  had  proved  the  deepening  of  the  Ocean,  by  sur- 
vey, accurate  or  cursory,  of  two  mud-plashes  on  the  coast  of 
the  Isle  of  Dogs  ?  c  Not  to  get  knowledge,  but  to  save  your- 
self from  having  ignorance  foisted  on  you  ! 9 

The  condition  of  the  working  man  in  this  country,  what  it 
is  and  has  been,  whether  it  is  improving  or  retrograding, — is 
a  question  to  which  from  statistics  hitherto  no  solution  can  be 
got.  Hitherto,  after  many  tables  and  statements,  one  is  still 
left  mainly  to  what  he  can  ascertain  by  his  own  eyes,  looking 
at  the  concrete  phenomenon  for  himself.  There  is  no  other 
method  ;  and  yet  it  is  a  most  imperfect  method.    Each  man 

*  An  Essay  on  the  Means  of  Insurance  against  the  Casualties  of  &c, 
&c.    London,  Charles  Knight  and  Company,  183G.    Price  two  shillings. 


STATISTICS. 


13 


expands  his  own  hand-breadth  of  observation  to  the  limits  of 
the  general  whole  ;  more  or  less,  each  man  must  take  what  he 
himself  has  seen  and  ascertained  for  a  sample  of  all  that  is 
seeable  and  ascertainable.  Hence  discrepancies,  controversies 
wide-spread,  long-continued  ;  which  there  is  at  present  no 
means  or  hope  of  satisfactorily  ending.  When  Parliament 
takes  up  the  c  Condition-of-England  question,'  as  it  will  have 
to  do  one  day,  then  indeed  much  maybe  amended!  Inquiries 
wisely  gone  into,  even  on  this  most  complex  matter,  will  yield 
results  worth  something,  not  nothing.  But  it  is  a  most  com- 
plex matter ;  on  which,  whether  for  the  past  or  the  present, 
Statistic  Inquiry,  with  its  limited  means,  with  its  short  vision 
and  headlong  extensive  dogmatism,  as  yet  too  often  throws 
not  light,  but  error  worse  than  darkness. 

What  constitutes  the  well-being  of  a  man  ?  Many  things  ; 
of  which  the  wages  he  gets,  and  the  bread  he  buys  with  them, 
are  but  one  preliminary  item.  Grant,  however,  that  the 
wages  were  the  whole  ;  that  once  knowing  the  wages  and  the 
price  of  bread,  we  know  all ;  then  what  are  the  wages  ? 
Statistic  Inquiry,  in  its  present  un guided  condition,  cannot 
tell.  The  average  rate  of  day's  wages  is  not  correctly  as- 
certained for  any  portion  of  this  country  ;  not  only  not  for 
half-centuries,  it  is  not  even  ascertained  anywhere  for  decades 
or  years  :  far  from  instituting  comparisons  with  the  past,  the 
present  itself  is  unknown  to  us.  And  then,  given  the  average 
of  wages,  what  is  the  constancy  of  employment ;  what  is  the 
difficulty  of  finding  employment  ;  the  fluctuation  from  season 
to  season,  from  year  to  year?  Is  it  constant,  calculable 
wages  ;  or  fluctuating,  incalculable,  more  or  less  of  the  nature 
of  gambling?  This  secondary  circumstance,  of  quality  in 
wages,  is  perhaps  even  more  important  than  the  primary  one 
of  quantity.  Farther  we  ask,  Can  the  labourer,  by  thrift  and 
industry,  hope  to  rise  to  mastership  ;  or  is  such  hope  cut  oft 
from  him  ?  How  is  he  related  to  his  employer  ;  by  bonds  of 
friendliness  and  mutual  help  ;  or  by  hostility,  opposition,  and 
chains  of  mutual  necessity  alone?  In  a  word,  what  degree  of 
contentment  can  a  human  creature  be  supposed  to  enjoy  in 
that  position  ?    With  hunger  preying  on  him,  his  content- 


14 


CHARTISM. 


ment  is  likely  to  be  small !  But  even  with  abundance,  his 
discontent,  his  real  misery  may  be  great.  The  labourer's 
feelings,  his  notion  of  being  justly  dealt  with  or  unjustly  ;  his 
■wholesome  composure,  frugality,  prosperity  in  the  one  case, 
his  acrid  unrest,  recklessness,  gin-drinking,  and  gradual  ruin 
in  the  other, — how  shall  figures  of  arithmetic  represent  all 
this  ?  So  much  is  still  to  be  ascertained  ;  much  of  it  by  no 
means  easy  to  ascertain  !  Till,  among  the  'Hill  Cooly '  and 
'  Dog-cart  *  questions,  there  arise  in  Parliament  and  extensively 
out  of  it  a  'Condition-of-England  question,'  and  quite  a  new  set 
of  inquirers  and  methods,  little  of  it  is  likely  to  be  ascertained. 

One  fact  on  this  subject,  a  fact  which  arithmetic  is  capable 
of  representing,  we  have  often  considered  would  be  worth  all 
the  rest :  whether  the  labourer,  whatever  his  wages  are,  is 
saving  money  ?  Laying  up  money,  he  proves  that  his  condi- 
tion, painful  as  it  may  be  without  and  within,  is  not  yet 
desperate  ;  that  he  looks  forward  to  a  better  day  coming,  and 
is  still  resolutely  steering  toward  the  same ;  that  all  the  lights 
and  darkness  of  his  lot  are  united  under  a  blessed  radiance 
of  hope, — the  last,  first,  nay  one  may  say  the  sole  blessedness 
of  man.  Is  the  habit  of  saving  increased  and  increasing,  or 
the  contrary  ?  Where  the  present  writer  has  been  able  to 
look  with  his  own  eyes,  it  is  decreasing,  and  in  many  quarters 
all  but  disappearing.  Statistic  science  turns  up  her  Savings- 
Bank  Accounts,  and  answers,  "Increasing  rapidly."  Would 
that  one  could  believe  it !  But  the  Danaides'-sieve  character 
of  such  statistic  reticulated  documents  is  too  manifest.  A 
few  years  ago,  in  regions  where  thrift,  to  one's  own  knowledge, 
still  was,  Savings-Banks  were  not  ;  the  labourer  lent  his 
money  to  some  farmer,  of  capital,  or  supposed  to  be  of  capital, 
— and  has  too  often  lost  it  since  ;  or  he  bought  a  cow  with  it, 
bought  a  cottage  with  it ;  nay  hid  it  under  his  thatch  :  the 
Savings-Banks  books  then  exhibited  mere  blank  and  zero. 
That  they  swell  yearly  now,  if  such  be  the  fact,  indicates  that 
what  thrift  exists  does  gradually  resort  more  and  more  thither 
rather  than  elsewither  ;  but  the  question,  Is  thrift  increasing? 
runs  through  the  reticulation,  and  is  as  water  spilt  on.  the 
ground,  not  to  be  gathered  here. 


NEW  POOR-LAW, 


15 


These  are  inquiries  on  which,  had  there  been  a  proper 
'  Condi tion-of -England  question,'  some  light  would  have  been 
thrown  before  '  torch -meetings '  arose  to  illustrate  them  ! 
For  as  they  lie  out  of  the  course  of  Parliamentary  routine, 
they  should  have  been  gone  into,  should  have  been  glanced 
at,  in  one  or  the  other  fashion.  A  Legislature  making  laws 
for  the  Working  Classes,  in  total  uncertainty  as  to  these  things, 
is  legislating  in  the  dark  ;  not  wisely,  nor  to  good  issues. 
The  simple  fundamental  question,  Can  the  labouring  man 
in  this  England  of  ours,  who  is  willing  to  labour,  find  work, 
and  subsistence  by  his  work?  is  matter  of  mere  conjecture 
and  assertion  hitherto  ;  not  ascertainable  by  authentic  evi- 
dence :  the  Legislature,  satisfied  to  legislate  in  the  dark,  has 
not  yet  sought  any  evidence  on  it.  They  pass  their  New 
Poor-Law  Bill,  without  evidence  as  to  all  this.  Perhaps  their 
New  Poor-Law  Bill  is  itself  only  intended  as  an  experimentum 
cruets  to  ascertain  all  this  ?  Chartism  is  an  answer,  seem- 
ingly not  in  the  affirmative. 


CHAPTEE  III. 

NEW  POOR-LAW. 

To  read  the  Keports  of  the  Poor-Law  Commissioners,  if  one 
had  faith  enough,  would  be  a*  pleasure  to  the  friend  of  hu- 
manity. One  sole  recipe  seems  to  have  been  needful  for  the 
woes  of  England  :  '  refusal  of  out-door  relief.'  England  lay 
in  sick  discontent,  writhing  powerless  on  its  fever-bed,  dark, 
nigh  desperate,  in  wastefulness,  want,  improvidence,  and  eat- 
ing care,  till  like  Hyperion  down  the  eastern  steeps,  the  Poor- 
Law  Commissioners  arose,  and  said,  Let  there  be  workhouses, 
and  bread  of  affliction  and  water  of  affliction  there  i  It  was  a 
simple  invention  ;  as  all  truly  great  inventions  are.  And  see, 
in  any  quarter,  instantly  as  the  walls  of  the  workhouse  arise, 
misery  and  necessity  fly  away,  out  of  sight, — out  of  being,  as 
is  fondly  hoped,  and  dissolve  into  the  inane  ;  industry,  fru- 
gality, fertility,  rise  of  wages,  peace  on  earth  and  goodwill 
towards  men  do,— in  the  Poor-Law  Commissioners'  Reports, 


16 


CHARTISM. 


— infallibly,  rapidly  or  not  so  rapidly,  to  the  joy  of  all  parties, 
supervene.  It  was  a  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished. 
We  have  looked  over  these  four  annual  Poor-Law  Eeports 
with  a  variety  of  reflections  ;  with  no  thought  that  our  Poor- 
Law  Commissioners  are  the  inhuman  men  their  enemies 
accuse  them  of  being  ;  with  a  feeling  of  thankfulness  rather 
that  there  do  exist  men  of  that  structure  too  ;  with  a  persua- 
sion deeper  and  deeper  that  Nature,  who  makes  nothing  to  no 
purpose,  has  not  made  either  them  or  their  Poor-Law  Amend- 
ment Act  in  vain.  We  hope  to  prove  that  they  and  it  were 
an  indispensable  element,  harsh  but  salutary,  in  the  progress 
of  things. 

That  this  Poor-Law  Amendment  Act  meanwhile  should  be, 
as  we  sometimes  hear  it  named,  the  '  chief  glory '  of  a  Reform 
Cabinet,  betokens,  one  would  imagine,  rather  a  scarcity  of 
glory  there.  To  say  to  the  poor,  Ye  shall  eat  the  bread  of 
affliction  and  drink  the  water  of  affliction  and  be  very  miser- 
able while  here,  required  not  so  much  a  stretch  of  heroic 
faculty  in  any  sense,  as  due  toughness  of  bowels.  If  paupers 
are  made  miserable,  paupers  will  needs  decline  in  multitude. 
It  is  a  secret  known  to  all  rat-catchers :  stop  up  the  granary- 
crevices,  afflict  with  continual  mewing,  alarm,  and  going-off 
of  traps,  your  '  chargeable  labourers '  disappear,  and  cease 
from  the  establishment.  A  still  briefer  method  is  that  of  ar- 
senic :  perhaps  even  a  milder,  where  otherwise  permissible. 
Rats  and  paupers  can  be  abolished  ;  the  human  faculty  was 
from  of  old  adequate  to  grind  them  down,  slowly  or  at  once, 
and  needed  no  ghost  or  Reform  Ministry  to  teach  it.  Fur- 
thermore when  one  hears  of  '  all  the  labour  of  the  country 
being  absorbed  into  employment '  by  this  new  system  of 
affliction,  when  labour  complaining  of  want  can  find  no  audi- 
ence, one  cannot  but  pause.  That  misery  and  unemployed 
labour  should  '  disappear '  in  that  case  is  natural  enough  ; 
should  go  out  of  sight — but  out  of  existence  ?  What  we  do 
know  is  that  6  the  rates  are  diminished,'  as  they  cannot  well 
help  being  ;  that  no  statistic  tables  as  yet  report  much  in- 
crease of  deaths  by  starvation  :  this  we  do  know,  and  not 
very  conclusively  anything  more  than  this.   If  this  be  absorp- 


NEW  POOR-LAW. 


vr 


tion  of  all  the  labour  of  the  country,  then  all  the  labour  of 
the  country  is  absorbed. 

To  believe  practically  that  the  poor  and  luckless  are  here 
only  as  a  nuisance  to  be  abraded  and  abated,  and  in  some 
permissible  manner  made  away  with,  and  swept  out  of  sight, 
is  not  an  amiable  faith.  That  the  arrangements  of  good  and 
ill  success  in  this  perplexed  scramble  of  a  world,  which  a 
blind  goddess  was  always  thought  to  preside  over,  are  in  fact 
the  work  of  a  seeing  goddess  or  god,  and  require  only  not  to 
be  meddled  with  :  what  stretch  of  heroic  faculty  or  inspira- 
tion of  genius  was  needed  to  teach  one  that?  To  button 
your  pockets  and  stand  still,  is  no  complex  recipe.  Laissez 
faire,  laissez  passei* !  "Whatever  goes  on,  ought  it  not  to  go 
on  ;  f  the  widow  picking  nettles  for  her  children's  dinner,  and 
'the  perfumed  seigneur  delicately  lounging  in  the  GEil-de- 
'  Boauf,  who  has  an  alchemy  whereby  he  will  extract  from 
'  her  the  third  nettle,  and  name  it  rent  and  law  ? '  What  is 
written  and  enacted,  has  it  not  black-on-white  to  shew  for  it- 
self ?  Justice  is  justice  ;  but  all  attorney's  parchment  is  of 
the  nature  of  Targum  or  sacred-parchment.  In  brief,  ours  is 
a  world  requiring  only  to  be  well  let  alone.  Scramble  along, 
thou  insane  scramble  of  a  world,  with  thy  pope's  tiaras,  king's 
mantles  and  beggar's  gabardines,  chivalry-ribbons  and  ple- 
beian gallows-ropes,  where  a  Paul  shall  die  on  the  gibbet  and 
a  Nero  sit  fiddling  as  imperial  Csesar  ;  thou  art  all  right,  and 
shalt  scramble  even  so  ;  and  whoever  in  the  press  is  trodden 
down,  has  only  to  lie  there  and  be  trampled  broad  : — Such  at 
bottom  seems  to  be  the  chief  social  principle,  if  principle  it 
have,  which  the  Poor-Law  Amendment  Act  has  the  merit  of 
courageously  asserting,  in  opposition  to  many  things.  A 
chief  social  principle  which  this  present  writer,  for  one,  will 
by  no  manner  of  means  believe  iu,  but  pronounce  at  all  lit 
times  to  be  false,  heretical  and  damnable,  if  ever  aught  was  ! 

And  yet,  as  we  said,  Nature  makes  nothing  in  vain  ;  not 
even  a  Poor-Law  Amendment  Act.  For  withal  we  are  far 
from  joining  in  the  outcry  raised  against  these  Poor-Law 
Commissioners,  as  if  they  were  tigers  in  men>  shape  ;  as  if 
their  Amendment  Act  were  a  mere  monstrosity  and  hqiror, 
2 


is 


CHARTISM. 


deserving  instant  abrogation.  They  are  not  tigers  ;  they  are 
men  filled  with  an  idea  of  a  theory  ;  their  Amendment  Act, 
heretical  and  damnable  as  a  whole  truth,  is  orthodox  laudable 
as  a  h alf  truth  ;  and  was  imperatively  required  to  be  put  in 
practice.  To  create  men  filled  with  a  theory  that  refusal  of 
out-door  relief  was  the  one  thing  needful  :  Nature  had  no 
readier  way  of  getting  out-door  relief  refused.  In  fact,  if  we 
look  at  the  old  Poor  Law,  in  its  assertion  of  the  opposite 
social  principle,  that  Fortune's  awards  are  not  those  of  Justice, 
we  shall  find  it  to  have  become  still  more  unsupportable,  de- 
manding, if  England  was  not  destined  for  speedy  anarchy,  to 
be  done  away  with. 

Any  law,  however  well  meant  as  a  law,  which  has  become 
a  bounty  on  unthrift,  idleness,  bastardy  and  beer-drinking, 
must  be  put  an  end  to.  In  all  ways  it  needs,*  especially  in 
these  times,  to  be  proclaimed  aloud  that  for  the  idle  man  there 
is  no  place  in  this  England  of  ours.  He  that  will  not  work, 
and  save  according  to  his  means,  let  him  go  elsewhither  ;  let 
him  know  that  for  him  the  Law  has  made  no  soft  provision, 
but  a  hard  and  stern  one  ;  that  by  the  Law  of  Nature,  which 
the  Law  of  England  would  vainly  contend  against  in  the  long- 
run,  he  is  doomed  either  to  quit  these  habits,  or  miserably  be 
extruded  from  this  Earth,  which  is  made  on  principles  dif- 
ferent from  these.  He  that  will  not  work  according  to  his 
faculty,  let  him  perish  according  to  his  necessity  :  there  is  no 
law  juster  than  that.  Would  to  heaven  one  could  preach  it 
abroad  into  the  hearts  of  all  sons  and  daughters  of  Adam,  for 
it  is  a  law  applicable  to  all ;  and  bring  it  to  bear,  with  prac- 
tical obligation  strict  as  the  Poor-Law  Bastille,  on  all.  We 
had  then,  in  good  truth,  a  '  perfect  constitution  of  society  ; ' 
and  '  God's  fair  Earth  and  Task-garden,  where  whosoever  is 
not  working  must  be  begging  or  stealing,'  were  then  actually 
what  always,  through  so  many  changes  and  struggles,  it  is  en- 
deavoring to  become. 

That  this  law  of  No  work  no  recompense,  should  first  of  all 
be  enforced  on  the  manual  worker,  and  brought  stringently 
home  to  him  and  his  numerous  class,  while  so  many  other 
classes  and  persons  still  go  loose  from  it,  was  natural  to  the 


NEW  POOR-LAW. 


to 


case.  Let  it  be  enforced  there,  and  rigidly  made  good.  It 
behoves  to  be  enforced  everywhere,  and  rigidly  made  good  ; — 
alas,  not  by  such  simple  methods  as  'refusal  of  outdoor  re- 
lief,' but  by  far  other  and  costlier  ones  ;  which  too,  howTever, 
a  bountiful  Providence  is  not  unfurnished  with,  nor,  in  these 
latter  generations  (if  we  will  understand  their  convulsions  and 
confusions),  sparing  to  apply.  Work  is  the  mission  of  man 
in  this  Earth.  A  day  is  ever  struggling  forward,  a  day  will 
arrive  in  some  approximate  degree,  when  he  who  has  no  wTork 
to  do,  by  whatever  name  he  may  be  named,  will  not  find  it 
good  to  show  himself  in  our  quarter  of  the  Solar  System ;  but 
may  go  and  look  out  elsewhere.  If  there  be  any  Idle  Planet 
discoverable  ? — Let  the  honest  working  man  rejoice  that  such 
law,  the  first  of  Nature,  has  been  made  good  on  him  ;  and 
hope  that,  by  and  by,  all  else  will  be  made  good.  It  is  the 
beginning  of  all.  We  define  the  harsh  New  Poor-Law  to  be 
withal  a  c  protection  of  the  thrifty  labourer  against  the  thrift- 
less and  dissolute  ; '  a  thing  inexpressibly  important ;  a  half- 
result,  detestable,  if  you  will,  when  looked  upon  as  the  whole 
result ;  yet  without  which  the  whole  result  is  forever  unat- 
tainable. Let  wastefulness,  idleness,  drunkenness,  improvi- 
dence take  the  fate  which  God  has  appointed  them  ;  that 
their  opposites  may  also  have  a  chance  for  their  fate.  Let  the 
Poor-Law  Administrators  be  considered  as  useful  labourers 
whom  Nature  has  furnished  with  a  whole  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse, that  they  might  accomplish  an  indispensable  fractional 
practice  there,  and  prosper  in  it  in  spite  of  much  contradic- 
tion. 

We  will  praise  the  New  Poor-La w,  farther,  as  the  probable 
preliminary  of  some  general  charge  to  be  taken  of  the  lowest 
classes  by  the  higher.  Any  general  charge  whatsoever,  rather 
than  a  conflict  of  charges,  varying  from  parish  to  parish  ;  the 
emblem  of  darkness,  of  unreadable  confusion.  Supervisal  by 
the  central  government,  in  what  spirit  soever  executed,  is 
supervisal  from  a  centre.  By  degrees  the  object  will  become 
clearer,  as  it  is  at  once  made  thereby  universally  conspicuous. 
By  degrees  true  vision  of  it  will  become  attainable,  will  be 
universally  attained ;  whatsoever  order  regarding*  it  is  just 


20 


CHARTISM. 


and  wise,  as  grounded  on  the  truth  of  it,  will  then  be  capable 
of  being  taken.  Let  us  welcome  the  New  Poor-Law  as  the 
harsh  beginning  of  much,  the  harsh  ending  of  much  !  Most 
harsh  and  barren  lies  the  new  ploughers'  fallow-field,  the 
crude  subsoil  all  turned  up,  which  never  saw  the  sun  ;  which 
as  yet  grows  no  herb  ;  which  has  £  out-door  relief  for  no  one. 
Yet  patience  :  innumerable  weeds  and  corruptions  lie  safely 
turned  down  and  extinguished  under  it ;  this  same  crude 
subsoil  is  the  first  step  of  all  true  husbandry  ;  by  Heaven's 
blessing  and  the  skyey  influences,  fruits  that  are  good  and 
blessed  will  yet  come  of  it. 

For,  in  truth,  the  claim  of  the  poor  labourer  is  something 
quite  other  than  that  '  Statute  of  the  Forty-third  of  Eliza- 
beth '  will  ever  fulfil  for  him.  Not  to  be  supported  by  rounds- 
men systems,  by  never  so  liberal  parish  doles,  or  lodged  in 
free  and  easy  workhouses  when  distress  overtakes  him  ;  not 
for  this,  however  in  words  he  may  clamour  for  it ;  not  for 
this,  but  for  something  far  different  does  the  heart  of  him 
struggle.  It  is  'for  justice'  that  he  struggles;  for  'just 
wages,' — not  in  money  alone  !  An  ever-toiling  inferior,  he 
would  fain  (though  as  yet  he  knows  it  not)  find  for  himself  a 
superior  that  should  lovingly  and  wisely  govern  :  is  not  that 
too  the  ' just  wages'  of  his  service  done?  It  is  for  a  manlike 
place  and  relation,  in  this  world  where  he  sees  himself  a  man, 
that  he  struggles.  At  bottom  may  we  not  say  it  is  even  for 
this,  That  guidance  and  government,  which  he  cannot  give 
himself,  which  in  our  so  complex  world  he  can  no  longer  do 
without,  might  be  afforded  him  ?  The  thing  he  struggles  for 
is  one  which  no  Forty-third  of  Elizabeth  is  in  any  condition 
to  furnish  him,  to  put  him  on  the  road  towards  getting.  Let 
him  quit  the  Forty- third  of  Elizabeth  altogether  ;  and  rejoice 
that  the  Poor-Law  Amendment  Act  has,  even  by  harsh  meth- 
ods and  against  his  own  will,  forced  him  away  from  it.  That 
was  a  broken  reed  to  lean  on,  if  there  ever  was  one  ;  and  did 
but  run  into  his  lamed  right-hand.  Let  him  cast  it  far  from 
him,  that  broken  reed,  and  look  to  quite  the  opposite  point 
of  the  heavens  for  help.  His  unlamed  right-hand,  with  the 
cunning  industry  that  lies  in  it,  is  not  this  defined  to  be  '  the 


FINEST  PEASANTRY  IN  THE  WORLD.  21 


sceptre  of  our  Planet '  ?  He  that  can  work  is  a  born  king  of 
something ;  is  in  communion  with  Nature,  is  master  of  a  thing 
or  things,  is  a  priest  and  king  of  Nature  so  far.  He  that  can 
work  at  nothing  is  but  a  usurping  king,  be  his  trappings  what 
they  may  ;  he  is  the  born  slave  of  all  things.  Let  a  man 
honour  his  craftsmanship,  his  can-do ;  and  know  that  his 
rights  of  man  have  no  concern  at  all  with  the  Forty-third  of 
Elizabeth. 


CHAPTEK  IV. 

FINEST  PEASANTRY  IN  THE  WORLD. 

The  New  Poor-Law  is  an  announcement,  sufficiently  dis- 
tinct, that  whosoever  will  not  work  ought  not  to  live.  Can 
the  poor  man  that  is  willing  to  work,  always  find  work,  and 
live  by  his  work  ?  Statistic  Inquiry,  as  we  saw,  has  no  an- 
swer to  give.  Legislation  presupposes  the  answer — to  be  in 
the  affirmative.  A  large  postulate  ;  which  should  have  been 
made  a  proposition  of  ;  which  should  have  been  demonstrated, 
made  indubitable  to  all  persons  !  A  man  willing  to  work,  and 
unable  to  find  work,  is  perhaps  the  saddest  sight  that  Fort- 
une's inequality  exhibits  under  this  sun.  Burns  expresses 
feelingly  what  thoughts  it  gave  him  ;  a  poor  man  seeking 
work  ;  seeking  leave  to  toil  that  he  might  be  fed  and  shel- 
tered !  That  he  might  be  put  on  a  level  with  the  four-footed 
workers  of  the  Planet  which  is  his  !  There  is  not  a  horse 
willing  to  work  but  can  get  food  and  shelter  in  requital ;  a 
thing  this  two-footed  worker  has  to  seek  for,  to  solicit  occa- 
sionally in  vain.  He  is  nobody's  two-footed  worker  ;  he  is  not 
even  anybody's  slave.  And  yet  he  is  a  ^o-footed  wrorker  ; 
it  is  currently  reported  there  is  an  immortal  soul  in  him,  sent 
down  out  of  Heaven  into  the  Earth  ;  and  one  beholds  him 
seeking  for  this  ! — Nay  what  will  a  wise  Legislature  say,  if  it 
turn  out  that  he  cannot  find  it  ;  that  the  answer  to  their  pos- 
tulate proposition  is  not  affirmative  but  negative  ? 

There  is  one  fact  which  Statistic  Science  has  communicated, 
and  a  most  astonishing  one  ;  the  inference  from  which  is  preg- 
uant  as  to  this  matter.    Ireland  has  near  seven  millions  of 


CHARTISM 


working  people,  the  third  unit  of  whom,  it  appears  by  Statis- 
tic Science,  has  not  for  thirty  weeks  each  year  as  many  third- 
rate  potatoes  as  will  suffice  him.  It  is  a  fact  perhaps  the  most 
eloquent  that  was  ever  written  down  in  any  language,  at  any 
date  of  the  world's  history.  Was  change  and  reformation 
needed  in  Iceland  ?  Has  Ireland  been  governed  and  guided 
in  a  '  wise  and  loving  '  manner  ?  A  government  and  guidance 
of  white  European  men  which  has  issued  in  perennial  hun- 
ger of  potatoes  to  the  third  man  extant, — ought  to  drop  a 
veil  over  its  face,  and  walk  out  of  court  under  conduct  of 
proper  officers  ;  saying  no  word  ;  expecting  now  of  a  surety 
sentence  either  to  change  or  die.  All  men,  we  must  repeat, 
were  made  by  God,  and  have  immortal  souls  in  them.  The 
Sanspotatoe  is  of  the  selfsame  stuff  as  the  superiinest  Lord 
Lieutenant.  Not  an  individual  Sanspotatoe  human  scarecrow 
but  had  a  Life  given  him  out  of  Heaven,  with  Eternities  de- 
pending on  it  ;  for  once  and  no  second  time.  With  Immensi- 
ties in  him.  over  him  and  round  him  :  with  feelings  which  a 
Shakspeare's  speech  would  not  utter  ;  with  desires  illimitable 
as  the  Autocrat's  of  all  the  Russias  !  Him  various  thrice- 
honoured  persons,  things  and  institutions  have  long  been 
teaching,  long  been  guiding,  governing  :  and  it  is  to  perpetual 
scarcity  of  thud-rate  potatoes,  and  to  what  depends  thereon, 
that  he  has  been  taught  and  guided.  Figure  thyself,  O  high- 
minded,  clear-headed,  clean-burnished  reader,  clapt  by  en- 
chantment into  the  torn  coat  and  waste  hunger-lair  of  that 
same  root-devouring  brother  man  ! — 

Social  anomalies  are  things  to  be  defended,  things  to  be 
amended  ;  and  in  all  places  and  things,  short  of  the  Pit  itself, 
there  is  some  admixture  of  worth  and  good.  Eoom  for  ex- 
tenuation, for  pifcy3  for  patience  !  And  yet  when  the  general 
result  has  come  to  the  length  of  perennial  starvation, — yes, 
then  argument,  extenuating  logic,  pity  and  patience  on  that 
subject  may  be  considered  as  drawing  to  a  close.  It  may  be 
considered  that  such  arrangement  of  things  will  have  to  termi- 
nate. That  it  has  all  just  men  for  its  natural  enemies.  That 
all  just  men,  of  what  outward  colour  soever  in  Politics  or 
otherwise,  will  say  :  This  cannot  last,  Heaven  disowns  it, 


FINEST  PEASANTRY  IN  THE  WOULD. 


2;: 


Earth  is  against  it ;  Ireland  will  be  burnt  into  a  black  unpeo- 
pled field  of  ashes  rather  than  this  should  last. — The  woes  of 
Ireland,  or  'justice  to  Ireland/  is  not  the  chapter  we  have  to 
write  at  present.  It  is  a  deep  matter,  an  abysmal  one,  which 
no  plummet  of  ours  wdll  sound.  For  the  oppression  has  gone 
far  farther  than  into  the  economies  of  Ireland  ;  inwards  to  her 
very  heart  and  soul.  The  Irish  National  character  is  degraded, 
disordered  ;  till  this  recover  itself,  nothing  is  yet  recovered. 
Immethodic,  headlong,  violent,  mendacious  ;  what  can  you 
make  of  the  wretched  Irishman?  "A  finer  people  never 
lived,"  as  the  Irish  lady  said  to  us  ;  <£  only  they  have  two  faults, 
they  do  generally  lie  and  steal  :  barring  these  " —  !  A  people 
that  knows  not  to  speak  the  truth,  and  to  act  the  truth,  such 
people  has  departed  from  even  the  possibility  of  welL-being. 
Such  people  works  no  longer  on  Nature  and  Reality  ;  works 
now  on  Fantasm,  Simulation,  Nonentity  ;  the  result  it  arrives 
at  is  naturally  not  a  thing  but  no-thing, — defect  even  of  po- 
tatoes. Scarcity,  futility,  confusion,  distraction  must  be  peren- 
nial there.  Such  a  people  circulates  not  order  but  disorder, 
through  every  vein  of  it  ; — and  the  cure,  if  it  is  to  be  a  cure, 
must  begin  at  the  heart :  not  in  his  condition  only  but  in  him- 
self must  the  Patient  be  all  changed.  Poor  Ireland  !  And  yet 
let  no  true  Irishman,  who  believes  and  sees  all  this,  despair 
by  reason  of  it.  Cannot  he  too  do  something  to  withstand 
the  unproductive  falsehood,  there  as  it  lies  accursed  around 
him,  and  change  it  into  truth,  which  is  fruitful  and  blessed  ? 
Every  mortal  can  and  shall  himself  be  a  true  man  :  it  is  a  great 
thing,  and  the  parent  of  great  things  ; — as  from  a  single  acorn 
the  whole  earth  might  in  the  end  be  peopled  with  oaks  ! 
Every  mortal  can  do  something  :  this  let  him  faithfully  do, 
and  leave  with  assured  heart  the  issue  to  a  Higher  Power ! 

We  English  pay,  even  now,  the  bitter  smart  of  long  centu- 
ries of  injustice  to  our  neighbour  Island.  Injustice,  doubt  it 
not,  abounds  ;  or  Ireland  would  not  be  miserable.  The  Earth 
is  good,  bountifully  sends  food  and  increase  ;  if  man's  unwis- 
dom did  not  intervene  and  forbid.  It  was  an  evil  day  when 
Strigul  first  meddled  with  that  people.  He  could  not  extir- 
pate them  :  could  they  but  have  agreed  together,  and  extir- 


24 


CHARTISM. 


pated  him  !  Violent  men  there  have  been,  and  merciful  ;  un- 
just rulers,  and  just  ;  conflicting  in  a  great  element  of  violence, 
these  five  wild  centuries  now  ;  and  the  violent  and  unjust  have 
carried  it,  and  we  are  come  to  this.  England  is  guilty  towards 
Ireland  ;  and  reaps  at  last,  in  full  measure,  the  fruit  of  fifteen 
generations  of  wrong-doing. 

But  the  thing  we  had  to  state  here  was  our  inference  from 
that  mournful  fact  of  the  third  Sanspotatoe, — coupled  with 
this  other  well-known  fact  that  the  Irish  speak  a  partially  in- 
telligible dialect  of  English,  and  their  fare  across  by  steam  is 
four-pence  sterling !  Crowds  of  miserable  Irish  darken  all 
our  towns.  The  wild  Milesian  features,  looking  false  inge- 
nuity, restlessness,  unreason,  misery  and  mockery,  salute  you 
on  all  highways  and  by-ways.  The  English  coachman,  as  he 
whirls  past,  lashes  the  Milesian  with  his  whip,  curses  him  with 
his  tongue  ;  the  Milesian  is  holding  out  his  hat  to  beg.  He  is 
the  sorest  evil  this  country  has  to  strive  with.  In  his  rags  and 
laughing  savagery,  he  is  there  to  undertake  all  work  that  can 
be  done  by  mere  strength  of  hand  and  back  ;  for  wages  that 
will  purchase  him  potatoes.  He  needs  only  salt  for  condi- 
ment ;  he  lodges  to  his  mind  in  any  pighutch  or  doghutch, 
roosts  in  outhouses  ;  and  wears  a  suit  of  tatters,  the  getting 
off  and  on  of  which  is  said  to  be  a  difficult  operation,  trans- 
acted only  in  festivals  and  the  hightides  of  the  calendar.  The 
Saxon  man  if  he  cannot  work  on  these  terms,  finds  no  work. 
He  too  may  be  ignorant  ;  but  he  has  not  sunk  from  decent 
manhood  to  squalid  apehood  :  he  cannot  continue  there. 
American  forests  lie  untilled  across  the  ocean  ;  the  uncivilised 
Irishman,  not  by  his  strength  but  by  the  opposite  of  strength, 
drives  out  the  Saxon  native,  takes  possession  in  his  room, 
There  abides  he,  in  his  squalor  and  unreason,  in  his  falsity 
and  drunken  violence,  as  the  ready-made  nucleus  of  degra- 
dation and  disorder.  Whosoever  struggles,  swimming  with 
difficulty,  may  now  find  an  example  how  the  human  being  can 
exist  not  swimming  but  sunk.  Let  him  sink  ;  he  is  not  the 
worst  of  men  ;  not  worse  than  this  man.  We  have  quarentines 
against  pestilence  ;  but  there  is  no  pestilence  like  that ;  and 
against  it  what  quarentine  is  possible  ?    It  is  lamentable  to  look 


BP 

f 

FINEST  PEASANTRY  IN  THE  WORLD.  25 

upon.  This  soil  of  Britain,  these  Saxon  men  have  cleared  it, 
made  it  arable,  fertile  and  a  home  for  them  ;  they  and  their 
fathers  have  done  that.  Under  the  sky  there  exists  no  force  of 
men  who  with  arms  in  their  hands  could  drive  them  out  of  it ;  all 
force  of  men  with  arms  these  Saxons  would  seize,  in  their  grim 
way,  and  fling  (Heaven's  justice  and  their  own  Saxon  humour 
aiding  them)  swiftly  into  the  sea.  But  behold,  a  force  of  men 
armed  only  with  rags,  ignorance  and  nakedness  ;  and.  the 
Saxon  owners,  paralysed  by  invisible  magic  of  paper  formula, 
have  to  fly  far,  and  hide  themselves  in  Transatlantic  forests. 
'Irish  repeal?'  " Would  to  God,"  as  Dutch  William  said, 
"  You  wrere  King  of  Ireland,  and  could  take  yourself  and  it 
three  thousand  miles  off," — there  to  repeal  it ! 

And  yet  these  poor  Celtiberian  Irish  brothers,  what  can  they 
help  it  ?  They  cannot  stay  at  home,  and  starve.  It  is  just 
and  natural  that  they  come  hither  as  a  curse  to  us.  Alas,  for 
them  too  it  is  not  a  luxury.  It  is  not  a  straight  or  joyful  way 
of  avenging  their  sore  wrongs  this  ;  but  a  most  sad  circuitous 
one.  Yet  a  way  it  is,  and  an  effectual  way.  The  time  has 
come  when  the  Irish  population  must  either  be  improved  a 
little,  or  else  exterminated.  Plausible  management,  adapted 
to  this  hollow  outcry  or  to  that,  will  no  longer  do  :  it  must  be 
management,  grounded  on  sincerity  and  fact,  to  which  the 
truth  of  things  will  respond — by  an  actual  beginning  of  im- 
provement to  these  wretched  brother-men.  In  a  state  of  per- 
ennial ultra-savage  famine,  in  the  midst  of  civilisation,  they 
cannot  continue.  For  that  the  Saxon  British  will  ever  submit 
to  sink  along  with  them  to  such  a  state,  we  assume  as  impos- 
sible. There  is  in  these  latter,  thank  God,  an  ingenuity  which 
is  not  false  ;  a  methodic  spirit,  of  insight,  of  perse verant  well- 
doing ;  a  rationality  and  veracity  which  Nature  with  her  truth 
does  not  disown  ; — withal  there  is  a  '  Berserkir-rage  '  in  the 
heart  of  them,  which  will  prefer  all  things,  including  destruc- 
tion and  self-destruction,  to  that.  Let  no  man  awaken  it,  this 
same  Berserkir-rage  !  Deep-hidden  it  lies,  far  down  in  the 
centre,  like  genial  central  fire,  with  stratum  after  stratum 
of  arrangement,  traditionary  method,  composed  productive- 
ness, all  built  above  it,  vivified  and  rendered  fertile  by  it : 


20 


CHARTISM. 


justice,  clearness,  silence,  perseverance,  unhasting  unresting 
diligence,  hatred  of  disorder,  hatred  of  injustice  which  is  the 
worst  disorder,  characterise  this  people  ;  their  inward  fire  we 
say,  as  all  such  fire  should  be,  is  hidden  at  the  centre.  Deep- 
hidden  ;  but  awakenable,  but  immeasurable  ;  — let  no  man 
awaken  it !  With  this  strong  silent  people  have  the  noisy 
vehement  Irish  now  at  length  got  common  cause  made.  Ire- 
land, now  for  the  first  time,  in  such  strange  circuitous  way, 
does  find  itself  embarked  in  the  same  boat  with  England,  to 
sail  together  or  to  sink  together  ;  the  wretchedness  of  Ireland, 
slowly  but  inevitably,  has  crept  over  to  us,  and  become  our 
own  wretchedness.  The  Irish  population  must  get  itself  re- 
dressed and  saved,  for  the  sake  of  the  English  if  for  nothing 
efse.  Alas,  that  it  should,  on  both  sides,  be  poor  toiling  men 
that  pay  the  smart  for  unruly  Striguls,  Plant agenets,  Mac- 
dermots,  and  O'Donoghues !  The  strong  have  eaten  sour 
grapes,  and  the  teeth  of  the  weak  are  set  on  edge.  '  Curses/ 
says  the  Proverb,  'are  like  chickens,  they  return  always 
home.' 

But  now  on  the  whole,  it  seems  to  us,  English  Statistic  Sci- 
ence, with  floods  of  the  finest  peasantry  in  the  world  stream- 
ing in  on  us  daily,  may  fold  up  her  Danaides  reticulations  on 
this  matter  of  the  Working  Classes  ;  and  conclude,  what  every 
man  who  will  take  the  statistic  spectacles  off  his  nose,  and 
look,  may  discern  in  town  or  country  :  That  the  condition  of 
the  lower  multitude  of  English  labourers  approximates  more 
and  more  to  that  of  ttie  Irish  competing  with  them  in  all 
markets ;  that  whatsoever  labour,  to  which  mere  strength 
with  little  skill  will  suffice,  is  to  be  done,  will  be  done  not  at 
the  English  price,  but  at  an  approximation  to  the  Irish  price  : 
at  a  price  superior  as  yet  to  the  Irish,  that  is,  superior  to 
scarcity  of  third-rate  potatoes  for  thirty  weeks  yearly  ;  su- 
perior, yet  hourly,  with  the  arrival  of  every  new  steamboat, 
sinking  nearer  to  an  equality  with  that.  Half-a-million  hand- 
loom  weavers,  working  fifteen  hours  a  day,  in  perpetual  ina- 
bility to  procure  thereby  enough  of  the  coarsest  food  ;  Eng- 
lish farm-labourers  at  nine  shillings  and  at  seven  shillings  a 
week  ;  Scotch  farm-labourers  who,  '  in  districts  the  half  of 


FINEST  PEASANTRY  IN  THE  WORLD  27 


whose  husbandry  is  that  of  cows,  taste  no  milk,  can  procure 
no  milk  ; '  all  these  things  are  credible  to  us  ;  several  of  them 
are  known  to  us  by  the  best  evidence,  by  eyesight.  With  all 
this  it  is  consistent  that  the  wages  of  '  skilled  labour/  as  it  is 
called,  should  in  many  cases  be  higher  than  they  ever  were  : 
the  giant  Steam  engine  in  a  giant  English  Nation  will  here 
create  violent  demand  for  labour,  and  will  there  annihilate 
demand.  But,  alas,  the  great  portion  is  not  skilled  :  the  mil- 
lions are  and  must  be  skilless,  where  strength  alone  is 
wanted ;  ploughers,  delvers,  borers  ;  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water  ;  menials  of  the  Steam  engine  only  the  chief 
menials  and  immediate  body- servants  of  which  require  skill. 
English  Commerce  stretches  its  fibres  over  the  whole  Earth  ; 
sensitive  literally,  nay  quivering  in  convulsion,  to  the  farthest 
influences  of  the  Earth.  The  huge  demon  of  Mechanism 
smokes  and  thunders,  panting  at  his  great  task,  in  all  sections 
of  English  land  ;  changing  his  shape  like  a  very  Proteus  ;  and 
infallibly  at  every  change  of  shape,  oversetting  whole  multi- 
tudes of  workmen,  and  as  if  with  the  waving  of  his  shadow 
from  afar,  hurling  them  asunder,  this  way  and  that,  in  their 
crowded  march  and  course  of  work  or  traffic  ;  so  that  the 
wisest  no  longer  knows  his  whereabout.  With  an  Ireland 
pouring  daily  in  on  us,  in  these  circumstances  ;  deluging  us 
down  to  its  own  waste  confusion,  outward  ■  and  inward,  it 
seems  a  cruel  mockery  to  tell  poor  drudges  that  their  con- 
dition is  improving. 

New  Poor-Law  !  Laissez-faire,  laisser-passer  !  The  master 
of  horses,  when  the  summer  labour  is  done,  has  to  feed  his 
horses  through  the  winter.  If  he  said  to  his  horses  :  "  Quad- 
rupeds, I  have  no  longer  work  for  you ;  but  work  exists 
abundantly  over  the  world  :  are  you  ignorant  (or  must  I  read 
you  Political-Economy  Lectures)  that  the  Steamengine  always 
in  the  long-run  creates  additional  work?  Railways  are  form- 
ing in  one  quarter  of  this  earth,  canals  in  another,  much 
cartage  is  wanted  :  somewhere  in  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  or 
America,  .  doubt  it  not,  ye  will  find  cartage  :  go  and  seek 
cartage,  and  good  go  with  you ! "  They  with  protrusive 
upper  lip,  snort  dubious  ;  signifying  that  Europe,  Asia,  Africa, 


28 


CHARTISM. 


and  America  lie  somewhat  out  of  their  beat :  that  what  cart- 
age may  be  wanted  there  is  not  too  well  known  to  them. 
They  can  find  no  cartage.  They  gallop  distracted  along  high- 
ways, all  fenced  in  to  the  right  and  to  the  left :  finally,  under 
pains  of  hunger,  they  take  to  leaping  fences  ;  eating  foreign 
property,  and — we  know  the  rest.  Ah,  it  is  not  a  joyful 
mirth,  it  is  sadder  than  tears,  the  laugh  Humanity  is  forced  to, 
at  Laissez-faire  applied  to  poor  peasants,  in  a  world  like  our 
Europe  of  the  year  1839  ! 

So  much  can  observation  altogether  unstatistic,  looking  only 
at  a  Drogheda  or  Dublin  steamboat,  ascertain  for  itself. 
Another  thing,  likewise  ascertainable  on  this  vast  obscure 
matter,  excites  a  superficial  surprise,  but  only  a  superficial  one  : 
That  it  is  the  best-paid  workmen  who,  by  Strikes,  Trades- 
unions,  Chartism,  and  the  like,  complain  the  most.  No  doubt 
of  it !  The  best-paid  workmen  are  they  alone  that  can  so 
complain  !  How  shall  he,  the  handloom  weaver,  who  in  the 
day  that  is  passing  over  him  has  to  find  food  for  the  day, 
strike. work?  If  he  strike  work,  he  starves  within  the  week. 
He  is  past  complaint ! — The  fact  itself,  however,  is  one  which, 
if  we  consider  it,  leads  us  into  still  deeper  regions  of  the 
malady.  Wages,  it  would  appear,  are  no  index  of  well-being 
to  the  working  man  :  without  proper  wages  there  can  be  no 
well-being  ;  but  with  them  also  there  may  be  none.  Wages 
of  working  men  differ  greatly  in  different  quarters  of  this 
country ;  according  to  the  researches  or  the  guess  of  Mr. 
Symmons,  an  intelligent  humane  inquirer,  they  vary  in  the 
ratio  of  not  less  than  three  to  one.  Cotton-spinners,  as  we  learn, 
are  generally  well  paid,  while  employed  ;  their  wages,  one 
week  with  another,  wives  and  children  all  working,  amount  to 
sums  which,  if  well  laid  out,  were  fully  adequate  to  comfort- 
able living.  And  yet,  alas,  there  seems  little  question  that 
comfort  or  reasonable  well-being  is  as  much  a  stranger  in 
these  households  as  in  any.  At  the  cold  hearth  of  the  ever- 
toiling,  ever-hungering  weaver,  dwells  at  least  some  equability, 
fixation  as  if  in  perennial  ice  :  hope  never  comes  ;  but  also 
irregular  impatience  is  absent.  Of  outward  things  these 
others  have  or  might  have  enough,  but  of  all  inward  things 


FINEST  PEASANTRY  IN  THE  WOULD. 


29 


there  is  the  fatallest  lack.  Economy  does  not  exist  among 
them  ;  their  trade  now  in  plethoric  prosperity,  anon  extenu- 
ated into  inanition  and  '  short- time/  is  of  the  nature  of  gamb- 
ling ;  they  live  by  it  like  gamblers,  now  in  luxurious  super- 
fluity, now  in  starvation.  Black  mutinous  discontent  devours 
them  ;  simply  the  miserablest  feeling  that  can  inhabit  the 
heart  of  man.  English  Commerce  with  its  world-wide  con- 
vulsive fluctuations,  with  its  immeasurable  Proteus  Steam - 
demon,  makes  all  paths  uncertain  for  them,  all  life  a  bewilder- 
ment :  sobriety,  steadfastness,  peaceable  continuance,  the  first 
blessings  of  man,  are  not  theirs. 

It  is  in  Glasgow  among  that  class  of  operatives  that  i  Num- 
ber 60/  in  his  dark  room,  pays  down  the  price  of  blood.  Be 
it  with  reason  or  with  unreason,  too  surely  they  do  in  verity 
find  the  time  all  out  of  joint ;  this  world  for  them  no  home, 
but  a  dingy  prison-house  of  reckless  unthrift,  rebellion,  ran- 
cour, indignation  against  themselves  and  against  all  men.  Is 
it  a  green  flowery  world,  with  azure  everlasting  sky  stretched 
over  it,  the  work  and  government  of  a  God  ;  or  a  murky-sim- 
mering Tophet,  of  copperas-fumes,  cotton-fuz,  gin-riot,  wrath 
and  toil,  created  by  a  Demon,  governed  by  a  Demon  ?  The 
sum  of  their  wretchedness  merited  and  unmerited  welters, 
huge,  dark  and  baleful,  like  a  Dante  an  Hell,  visible  there  in 
the  statistics  of  Gin :  Gin  justly  named  the  most  authentic 
incarnation  of  the  Infernal  Principle  in  our  times,  too  indis- 
putable an  incarnation  ;  Gin  the  black  throat  into  which 
wretchedness  of  every  sort,  consummating  itself  by  calling 
on  delirium  to  help  it,  whirls  down  ;  abdication  of  the  power 
to  think  or  resolve,  as  too  painful  now,  on  the  part  of  men 
whose  lot  of  all  others  would  require  thought  and  resolution  ; 
liquid  Madness  sold  at  ten-pence  the  quartern,  all  the  products 
of  which  are  and  must  be,  like  its  origin,  mad,  miserable, 
ruinous,  and  that  only  !  If  from  this  black  unluminous  un- 
heeded Inferno,  and  Prisonhouse  of  souls  in  pain,  there  do 
flash  up  from  time  to  time,  some  dismal  wide-spread  glare  of 
Chartism  or  the  like,  notable  to  all,  claiming  remedy  from  all, 
— are  we  to  regard  it  as  more  baleful  than  the  quiet  state>  or 
rather  as  not  so  baleful  ?    Ireland  is  in  chronic  atrophy  these 


30 


C II AUTISM. 


five  centuries  ;  the  disease  of  nobler  England,  identified  now 
with  that  of  Ireland,  becomes  acute,  has  crises,  and  will  be 
cured  or  kill. 


CHAPTEK  V. 

RIGHTS  AND  MIGHTS. 

It  is  not  what  a  man  outwardly  has  or  wants  that  constitutes 
the  happiness  or  misery  of  him.  Nakedness,  hunger,  distress 
of  all  kinds,  death  itself  have  been  cheerfully  suffered,  when 
the  heart  was  right.  It  is  the  feeling  of  injustice  that  is  insup- 
portable to  all  men.  The  brutallest  black  African  cannot  bear 
that  he  should  be  used  unjustly.  No  man  can  bear  it,  or  ought 
to  bear  it.  A  deeper  law  than  any  parchment-law  whatsoever, 
a  law  written  direct  by  the  hand  of  God  in  the  inmost  being 
of  man,  incessantly  protests  against  it.  What  is  injustice  ? 
Another  name  for  disorder,  for  unveracity,  unreality  ;  a  thing 
which  veracious  created  Nature,  even  because  it  is  not  Chaos 
and  a  waste-whirling  baseless  Phantasm,  rejects  and  disowns. 
It  is  not  the  outward  pain  of  injustice  ;  that,  were  it  even  the 
•flaying  of  the  back  with  knotted  scourges,  the  severing  of 
the  head  with  guillotines,  is  comparatively  a  small  matter. 
The  real  smart  is  the  soul's  pain  and  stigma,  the  hurt  inflicted 
on  the  moral  self.  The  rudest  clown  must  draw  himself  up 
into  attitude  of  battle,  and  resistance  to  the  death,  if  such  be 
offered  him.  He  cannot  live  under  it ;  his  own  soul^aloud, 
and  all  the  universe  with  silent  continual  beckonings,  says,  It 
cannot  be.  He  must  revenge  himself  ;  revancher  himself,  make 
himself  good  again, — that  so  meum  may  be  mine,  tuum  thine, 
and  each  party  standing  clear  on  his  own  basis,  order  be  re- 
stored. There  is  something  infinitely  respectable  in  this,  and 
we  may  say  universally  respected  :  it  is  the  common  stamp  of 
manhood  vindicating  itself  in  all  of  us,  the  basis  of  whatever 
is  worthy  in  all  of  us,  and  through  superficial  diversities,  the 
same  in  all. 

As  disorder,  insane  by  the  nature  of  it,  is  the  hatefullest  of 
things  to  man,  who  lives  by  sanity  and  order,  so  injustice  is 
the  worst  evil,  some  call  it  the  only  evil,  in  this  world.  All 


BIGHTS  AND  MIGHTS. 


31 


men  submit  to  toil,  to  disappointment,  to  unliappiness  ;  it  is 
their  lot  here  ;  but  in  all  hearts,  inextinguishable  by  sceptic 
logic,  by  sorrow,  perversion  or  despair  itself,  there  is  a  small 
still  voice  intimating  that  it  is  not  the  final  lot  ;  that  wild, 
waste,  incoherent  as  it  looks,  a  God  presides  over  it ;  that  it 
is  not  an  injustice  but  a  justice.  Force  itself,  the  hopeless- 
ness of  resistance,  has  doubtless  a  composing  effect  ; — against 
inanimate  Simooms,  and  much  other  infliction  of  the  like  sort, 
we  have  found  it  suffice  to  produce  complete  composure.  Yet, 
one  would  say,  a  permanent  Injustice  even  from  an  Infinite 
Power  would  prove  unendurable  by  men.  If  men  had  lost 
belief  in  a  God,  their  only  resource  against  a  blind  No-God, 
of  Necessity  and  Mechanism,  that  held  them  like  a  hideous 
World-Steamengine,  like  a  hideous  Phalaris'  Bull,  imprisoned 
in  its  own  iron  belly,  would  be,  with  or  without  hope, — revolt 
They  could,  as  Novalis  says,  by  a  c  simultaneous  universal  act 
of  suicide,'  depart  out  of  the  World-Steamengine;  and  end,  if 
not  in  victory,  yet  in  invincibility,  and  unsubduable  protest 
that  such  World-Steamengine  was  a  failure  and  a  stupidity. 

Conquest,  indeed,  is  a  fact  often  witnessed  ;  conquest,  which 
seems  mere  wrong  and  force,  everywhere  asserts  itself  as  a 
right  among  men.  Yet  if  we  examine,  we  shall  find  that,  in 
f  this  world,  no  conquest  could  ever  become  permanent,  which 
did  not  withal  shew  itself  beneficial  to  the  conquered  as 
well  as  to  conquerors.  Mithridates  King  of  Pontus,  come 
now  to  extremity,  c  appealed  to  the  patriotism  of  his  people  ; ' 
but,  says  the  history,  '  he  had  squeezed  them,  and  fleeced  and 
plundered  them,  for  long  years  his  requisitions,  flying  ir- 
regular, devastative,  like  the  whirlwind,  were  less  supportable 
than  Roman  strictness  and  method,  regular  though  never  so 
rigorous  ;  he  therefore  appealed  to  their  patriotism  in  vain. 
The  Eomans  conquered  Mithridates.  The  Romans,  having 
conquered  the  world,  held  it  conquered,  because  they  could 
best  govern  the  world  ;  the  mass  of  men  found  it  nowise  press- 
ing to  revolt  ;  their  fancy  might  be  afflicted  more  or  less,  but 
in  their  solid  interests  they  were  better  off  than  before.  So 
too  in  this  England  long  ago,  the  old  Saxon  Nobles,  disunited 
among  themselves,  and  in  power  too  nearly  equal,  could  not 


CHARTISM. 


have  governed  the  country  well ;  Harold  being  slain,  their  last 
chance  of  governing  it,  except  in  anarchy  and  civil  war,  was 
over  ;  a  new  class  of  strong  Norman  Nobles,  entering  with  a 
strong  man,  with  a  succession  of  strong  men  at  the  head  of 
them,  and  not  disunited,  but  united  by  many  ties,  by  their 
very  community  of  language  and  interest,  had  there  been  no 
other,  were  in  a  condition  to  govern  it ;  and  did  govern  it,  we 
can  believe,  in  some  rather  tolerable  manner,  or  they  would 
not  have  continued  there.  They  acted,  little  conscious  of  such 
function  on  their  part,  as  an  immense  volunteer  Police  Force, 
stationed  everywhere,  united,  disciplined,  feudally  regimented, 
ready  for  action  ;  strong  Teutonic  men  ;  who  on  the  whole 
proved  effective  men,  and  drilled  this  wild  Teutonic  people  into 
unity  and  peaceable  co-operation  better  than  others  could  have 
done  !  How  can-do,  if  we  will  well  interpret  it,  unites  itself 
with  shatt-do  among  mortals  ;  how  strength  acts  ever  as  the 
right-arm  of  justice  ;  how  might  and  right,  so  frightfully  dis- 
crepant at  first,  are  ever  in  the  long-run  one  and  the  same, — 
is  a  cheering  consideration,  which  always  in  the  black  tem- 
pestuous vortices  of  this  world's  history,  will  shine  out  on  us, 
like  an  everlasting  polar  star. 

Of  conquest  we  may  say  that  it  never  yet  went  by  brute 
force  and  compulsion  ;  conquest  of  that  kind  does  not  endure.  , 
Conquest,  along  with  power  of  compulsion,  an  essential  uni- 
versally in  human  society,  must  bring  benefit  along  with  it, 
or  men,  of  the  ordinary  strength  of  men,  will  fling  it  out. 
The  strong  man,  what  is  he  if  we  will  consider  ?  The  wise 
man  ;  the  man  with  the  gift  of  method,  of  faithfulness  and 
valour,  all  of  which  are  of  the  basis  of  wisdom  ;  who  has  in- 
sight into  what  is  what,  into  what  will  follow  out  of  what,  the 
eye  to  see  and  the  hand  to  do  ;  who  is  fit  to  administer,  to  di- 
rect, and  guidingly  command  :  he  is  the  strong  man.  His 
muscles  and  bones  are  no  stronger  than  ours  ;  but  his  soul  is 
stronger,  his  soul  is  wiser,  clearer, — is  better  and  nobler,  for  that 
is,  has  been,  and  ever  will  be  the  root  of  ail  clearness  worthy  of 
such  a  name.  Beautiful  it  is,  and  a  gleam  from  the  same 
eternal  pole-star  visible  amid  the  destinies  of  men,  that  all 
talent,  all  intellect  is  in  the  first  place  moral ; — what  a  world 


RIGHTS  AND  MIGHTS. 


38 


were  this  otherwise  !  But  it  is  the  heart  always  that  sees,  be- 
fore the  head  can  see  :  let  us  know  that  ;  and  know  therefore 
that  the  Good  alone  is  deathless  and  victorious,  that  Hope  is 
sure  and  steadfast,  in  all  phases  of  this  'Place  of  Hope.' — 
Shiftiness,  quirk,  attorney- cunning  is  a  kind  of  thing  that  fan- 
cies itself,  and  is  often  fancied,  to  be  talent  ;  but  it  is  luckily 
mistaken  in  that.  Succeed  truly  it  does,  what  is  called  succeed- 
ing ;  and  even  must  in  general  succeed,  if  the  dispensers  of 
success  be  of  due  stupidity  :  men  of  due  stupidity  will  needs 
say  to  it,  "Thou  art  wisdom,  rule  thou!" — Whereupon  it 
rules.  But  Nature  answers,  "No,  this  ruling  of  thine  is  not 
according  to  my  laws  ;  thy  wisdom  was  not  wise  enough  ! 
Dost  thou  take  me  too  for  a  Quackery  ?  For  a  Convention- 
ality and  Attorneyism  ?  This  chaff  that  thou  sowest  into  my 
bosom,  though  it  pass  at  the  poll-booth  and  elsewhere  for 
seed-corn,  /  will  not  grow  wheat  out  of  it,  for  it  is  chaff !  " 

But  to  return.  Injustice,  infidelity  to  truth  and  fact  and 
Nature's  order,  being  properly  the  one  evil  under  the  sun,  and 
the  feeling  of  injustice  the  one  intolerable  pain  under  the  sun, 
our  grand  question  as  to  the  condition  of  these  working  men 
would  be  :  Is  it  just  ?  And  first  of  all,  What  belief  have  they 
themselves  formed  about  the  justice  of  it  ?  The  words  they 
promulgate  are  notable  by  way  of  answer  ;  their  actions  are 
still  more  notable.  Chartism  with  its  pikes,  Swing  with  his 
tinder-box,  speak  a  most  loud  though  inarticulate  language. 
Glasgow  Thuggery  speaks  aloud  too,  in  a  language  we  may 
well  call  infernal.  What  kind  of  '  wild-justice  '  must  it  be  in 
the  hearts  of  these  men  that  prompts  them,  with  cold  delib- 
eration, in  conclave  assembled,  to  doom  their  brother  work- 
man, as  the  deserter  of  his  order  and  his  order's  cause,  to  die 
as  a  traitor  and  deserter  ;  and  have  him  executed,  since  not 
by  any  public  judge  and  hangman,  then  by  a  private  one 
like  your  old  Chivalry  Femgericht,  and  Secret-Tribunal,  sud- 
denly in  this  strange  guise  become  new  ;  suddenly  rising 
once  more  on  the  astonished  eye,  dressed  now  not  in  mail- 
shirts  but  in  fustian  jackets,  meeting  not  in  Westphalian  for- 
ests but  in  the  paved  Gallowgate  of  Glasgow  !  Not  loyal  lov- 
ing obedience  to  those  placed  over  them,  but  a  far  other 
3 


34 


CHARTISM. 


temper,  must  animate  these  men  !  It  is  frightful  enough. 
Such  temper  must  be  wide-spread,  virulent  among  the  many, 
when  even  in  its  worst  acme,  it  can  take  such  a  form  in  a  few. 
But  indeed  decay  of  loyalty  in  all  senses,  disobedience,  decay 
of  religious  faith,  has  long  been  noticeable  and  lamentable  in 
this  largest  class,  as  in  other  smaller  ones.  Revolt,  sullen  re- 
vengeful humour  of  revolt  against  the  upper  classes,  decreasing 
respect  for  what  their  temporal  superiors  command,  decreasing 
faith  for  what  their  spiritual  superiors  teach,  is  more  and  more 
the  universal  spirit  of  the  lower  classes.  Such  spirit  may  be 
blamed,  may  be  vindicated  ;  but  all  men  must  recognize  it  as 
extant  there,  all  may  know  that  it  is  mournful,  that  unless 
altered  it  will  be  fatal.  Of  lower  classes  so  related  to  upper, 
happy  nations  are  not  made  !  To  whatever  other  griefs  the 
lower  classes  labour  under,  this  bitterest  and  sorest  grief  now 
superadds  itself.;  the  unendurable  conviction  that  they  are 
unfairly  dealt  with,  that  their  lot  in  this  world  is  not  founded 
on  right,  not  even  on  necessity  and  might,  is  neither  what  it 
should  be,  nor  what  it  shall  be. 

Or  why  do  we  ask  of  Chartism,  Glasgow  Trades-Unions,  and 
such  like  ?  Has  not  broad  Europe  heard  the  question  put, 
and  answered,  on  the  great  scale  ;  has  not  a  French  Revolution 
been  ?  Since  the  year  1789,  there  is  now  half-a-century  com- 
plete ;  and  a  French  Revolution  not  yet  complete  !  Whoso- 
ever will  look  at  that  enormous  Phenomenon  may  find  many 
meanings  in  it,  but  this  meaning  as  the  ground  of  all :  That  it 
was  a  revolt  of  the  oppressed  lower  classes  against  the  oppress- 
ing or  neglecting  upper  classes  :  not  a  French  revolt  only  ; 
no,  a  European  one  ;  full  of  stern  monition  to  all  countries  of 
Europe.  These  Chartisms,  Radicalisms,  Reform  Bill,  Tithe 
Bill,  and  infinite  other  discrepancy,  and  acrid  argument  and 
jargon  that  there  is  yet  to  be,  are  our  French  Revolution  :  God 
grant  that  we  with  our  better  methods,  may  be  able  to  trans- 
act it  by  argument  alone  ! 

The  French  Revolution,  now  that  we  have  sufficiently  ex- 
ecrated its  horrors  and  crimes,  is  found  to  have  had  withal  a 
great  meaning  in  it.  As  indeed,  what  great  thing  ever  hap- 
pened in  this  world,  a  world  understood  always  to  be  mac? 


RIGHTS  AND  MIGHTS. 


35 


and  governed  by  a  Providence  and  Wisdom,  not  by  an  Un- 
wisdom, without  meaning  somewhat  ?  It  was  a  tolerably 
audible  voice  of  proclamation,  and  universal  oyez  !  to  all  peo- 
ple, this  of  three-and-twenty  years'  close  fighting,  sieging, 
conflagrating,  with  a  million  or  two  of  men  shot  dead  :  the 
world  ought  to  know  by  this  time  that  it  was  verily  meant  in 
earnest,  that  same  Phenomenon,  and  had  its  own  reasons  for 
appearing  there  !  Which  accordingly  the  world  begins  now 
to  do.  The  French  Revolution  is  seen,  or  begins  everywhere 
to  be  seen,  '  as  the  crowning  phenomenon  of  our  Modern 
■  Time  ;  the  inevitable  stern  end  of  much  ;  the  fearful,  but  also 
£  wonderful,  indispensable  and  sternly  beneficent  beginning  of 
'  much.'  He  who  would  understand  the  struggling  convulsive 
unrest  of  European  societ}7,  in  any  and  every  country,  at  this 
day,  may  read  it  in  broad  glaring  lines  there,  in  that  the  most 
convulsive  phenomenon  of  the  last  thousand  years.  Europe 
lay  pining,  obstructed,  moribund  ;  quack-ridden,  hag-ridden, 
— is  there  a  hag,  or  spectre  of  the  Pit,  so  baleful,  hideous  as 
your  accredited  quack,  were  he  never  so  close-shaven,  mild- 
spoken,  plausible  to  himself  and  others  ?  Quack-ridden :  in 
that  one  word  lies  all  misery  whatsoever.  Speciosity  in  all 
departments  usurps  the  place  of  reality,  thrusts  reality  away  ; 
instead  of  performance,  there  is  appearance  of  performance. 
The  quack  is  a  Falsehood  Incarnate  ;  and  speaks,  and  makes 
and  does  mere  falsehoods,  which  Nature  with  her  veracity  has 
to  disown.  As  chief  priest,  as  chief  governor,  he  stands  there, 
intrusted  with  much.  The  husbandman  of  6  Time's  Seedfield  ; ' 
he  is  the  world's,  hired  sower,  hired  and  solemnly  appointed 
to  sow  the  kind  true  earth  with  wheat  this  year,  that  next 
year  all  men  may  have  bread.  He,  miserable  mortal,  deceiv- 
ing and  self-deceiving,  sows  it,  as  we  said,  not  with  corn  but 
w7ith  chaff ;  the  world  nothing  doubting,  harrows  it  in,  pays 
him  his  wages,  dismisses  him  with  blessing,  and — next  year 
there  has  no  corn  sprung.  Nature  has  disowned  the  chaff, 
has  declined  growing  chaff,  and  behold  now  there  is  no  bread  ! 
It  becomes  necessary,  in  such  case,  to  do  several  things  ;  not 
soft  things  some  of  them,  but  hard. 

Nay  we  will  add  that  the  very  circumstance  of  quacks  in 


36 


CHARTISM. 


unusual  quantity  getting  domination,  indicates  that  the  heart 
of  the  world  is  already  wrong.  The  impostor  is  false  ;  but 
neither  are  his  dupes  altogether  true  :  is  not  his  first  grand 
dupe  the  falsest  of  all, — himself  namely?  Sincere  men,  of 
never  so  limited  intellect,  have  an  instinct  for  discriminating 
sincerity.  The  cunningest  Mephistopheles  cannot  deceive  a 
simple  Margaret  of  honest  heart ;  '  it  stands  written  on  his 
brow.'  Masses  of  people  capable  of  being  led  away  by  quacks 
are  themselves  of  partially  untrue  spirit.  Alas,  in  such  times 
it  grows  to  be  the  universal  belief,  sole  accredited  knowing - 
ness,  and  the  contrary  of  it  accounted  puerile  enthusiasm,  this 
sorrowfullest  <febelief  that  there  is  properly  speaking  any 
truth  in  the  world  ;  that  the  world  was,  has  been,  or  ever  can 
be  guided,  except  by  simulation,  dissimulation,  and  the  suf- 
ficiently dexterous  practice  of  pretence.  The  faith  of  men  is 
dead  :  in  what  has  guineas  in  its  pocket,  beefeaters  riding  be- 
hind it,  and  cannons  trundling  before  it,  they  can  believe  ;  in 
what  has  none  of  these  things  they  cannot  believe.  Sense  for 
the  true  and  false  is  last ;  there  is  properly  no  longer  any  true 
or  false.  It  is  the  heyday  of  Imposture  ;  of  Semblance  recog- 
nising itself,  and  getting  itself  recognised,  for  Substance. 
Gaping  multitudes  listen  ;  unlistening  multitudes  see  not  but 
that  it  is  all  right,  and  in  the  order  of  Nature.  Earnest  men, 
one  of  a  million,  shut  their  lips  ;  suppressing  thoughts,  which 
there  are  no  words  to  utter.  To  them  it  is  too  visible  that 
spiritual  life  has  departed  ;  that  material  life,  in  whatsoever 
figure  of  it,  cannot  long  remain  behind.  To  them  it  seems  as 
if  our  Europe  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  long  hag-ridden, 
vexed  with  foul  enchanters,  to  the  length  now  of  gorgeous 
Domdaniel  Parcs-aux-cerfs  and  1  Peasants  living  on  meal-husks 
and  boiled  grass,'  had -verily  sunk  down  to  die  and  dissolve  ; 
and  were  now,  with  its  French  Philosophisms,  Hume  Scepti- 
cisms, Diderot  Atheisms,  maundering  in  the  final  deliration  ; 
writhing,  with  its  Seven-years  Silesian  robber-wars,  in  the 
final  agony.  Glory  to  God,  our  Europe  was  not  to  die  but  to 
live  !  Our  Europe  rose  like  a  frenzied  giant  ;  shook  all  that 
poisonous  magician  trumpery  to  right  and  left,  trampling  it 
stormf ully  under  foot ;  and  declared  aloud  that  there  was 


RIGHTS  AND  MIGHTS. 


strength  in  him,  not  for  life  only,  but  for  new  and  infinitely 
wider  life.  Antseus-like  the  giant  had  struck  his  foot  once 
more  upon  Reality  and  the  Earth  ;  there  only,  if  in  this  uni- 
verse at  all,  lay  strength  and  healing  for  him.  Heaven  knows, 
it  was  not  a  gentle  process  ;  no  wonder  that  it  was  a  fearful 
process,  this  same  '  Phoenix  fire-consummation  ! '  But  the 
alternative  was  this  or  death  ;  the  merciful  Heavens,  merciful 
in  their  severity,  sent  us  this  rather. 

And  so  the  'rights  of  man'  were  to  be  written  down  on 
paper  ;  and  experimentally  wrought  upon  towards  elaboration, 
in  huge  battle  and  wrestle,  element  conflicting  with  element, 
from  side  to  side  of  this  Earth,  for  three-and-twenty  years. 
Rights  of  man,  wrongs  of  man  ?  It  is  a  question  which  has 
swallowed  whole  nations  and  generations ;  a  question — on 
which  we  will  not  enter  here.  Ear  be  it  from  us  !  Logic  has 
small  business  with  this  question  at  present ;  logic  has  no 
plummet  that  will  sound  it  at  any  time.  But  indeed  the 
rights  of  man,  as  has  been  not  unaptly  remarked,  are  little 
worth  ascertaining  in  comparison  to  the  migJits  of  man, — to 
what  portion  of  his  rights  he  has  any  chance  of  being  able  to 
make  good !  The  accurate  final  rights  of  man  lie  in  the  far 
deeps  of  the  Ideal,  where  £  the  Ideal  weds  itself  to  the  Possi- 
ble,' as  the  Philosophers  say.  The  ascertainable  temporary 
rights  of  man  vary  not  a  little,  according  to  place  and  time. 
They  are  known  to  depend  much  on  what  a  man's  convictions 
of  them  are.  The  Highland  wife,  with  her  husband  at  the 
foot  of  the  gallows,  patted  him  on  the  shoulder  (if  there  be 
historical  truth  in  Joseph  Miller),  and  said  amid  her  tears : 
"Go  up,  Donald,  my  man;  the  Laird  bids  ye."  To  her  it 
seemed  the  rights  of  lairds  were  great,  the  rights  of  men 
small ;  and  she  acquiesced.  Deputy  Lapoule,  in  the  Salle  deb 
Menus  at  Versailles,  on  the  4th  of  August,  1789,  demanded 
(he  did  actually  '  demand/  and  by  unanimous  vote  obtain) 
that  the  '  obsolete  law '  authorizing  a  Seigneur,  on  his  return 
from  the  chase  or  other  needful  fatigue,  to  slaughter  not 
above  two  of  his  vassals,  and  refresh  his  feet  in  their  warm 
blood  and  bowels,  should  be  '  abrogated.'  From  such  obso- 
lete law,  or  mad  tradition  and  phantasm  of  an  obsolete  law. 


38 


CHARTISM. 


down  to  any  corn-law,  game-law,  rotten-borough  law,  or  other 
law  or  practice  clamoured  of  in  this  time  of  ours,  the  distance 
travelled  over  is  great  ! — What  are  the  rights  of  men  ?  All 
men  are  justified  in  demanding  and  searching  for  their  rights  ; 
moreover,  justified  or  not,  they  will  do  it :  by  Chartisms, 
^Radicalisms,  French  Revolutions,  or  whatsoever  methods  they 
have.  Eights  surely  are  right  :  on  the  other  hand,  this  other 
saying  is  most  true,  £  Use  every  man  according  to  his  rights, 
and  who  shall  escape  whipping  ! '  These  two  things,  we  say, 
are  both  true  ;  and  both  are  essential  to  make  up  the  whole 
truth.  All  good  men  know  always  and  feel,  each  for  himself, 
that  the  one  is  not  less  true  than  the  other ;  and  act  accord- 
ingly. The  contradiction  is  of  the  surface  only  ;  as  in  oppo- 
site sides  of  the  same  fact  :  universal  in  this  dualism  of  a  life 
we  have.  Between  these  two  extremes,  Society  and  all  human 
things  must  fluctuatmgiy  adjust  themselves  the  best  they  can. 

And  yet  that  there  is  verily  a  £  rights  of  man '  let  no  mortal 
doubt.  An  ideal  of  right  does  dwell  in  all  men,  in  all  arrange- 
ments, pactions  and  procedures  of  men  ;  it  is  to  this  ideal  of 
right,  more  and  more  developing  itself  as  it  is  more  and  more 
approximated  to,  that  human  Society  for  ever  tends  and  strug- 
gles. We  say  also  that  any  given  thing  either  is  unjust  or 
else  just ;  however  obscure  the  arguings  and  stragglings  on  it 
be,  the  thing  in  itself  there  as  it  lies,  infallibly  enough,  is  the 
one  or  the  other.  To  which  let  us  add  only  this,  the  first, 
last  article  of  faith,  the  alpha  and  omega  of  all  faith  among 
men,  That  nothing  which  is  unjust  can  hope  to  continue  in 
this  world.  A  faith  true  in  all  times,  more  or  less  forgotten 
in  most,  but  altogether  frightfully  brought  to  remembrance 
again  in  ours  !  Lyons  fusilladings,  Nantes  noyadings,  reigns 
of  terror,  and  such  other  universal  battle-thunder  and  explo- 
sion ;  these,  if  we  will  understand  them,  were  but  a  new  irre- 
fragable preaching  abroad  of  that.  It  would  appear  that 
Speciosities  which  are  not  Realities  cannot  any  longer  inhabit 
this  world.  It  wrould  appear  that  the  unjust  thing  has  no 
friend  in  the  Heaven,  and  a  majority  against  it  on  the  earth ; 
nay,  that  it  has  at  bottom  all  men  for  its  enemies  ;  that  it  may 
take  shelter  in  this  fallacy  and  then  in  that,  but  will  be  hunted 


LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 


39 


from  fallacy  to  fallacy,  till  it  find  no  fallacy  to  shelter  in  any 
more,  but  must  march  and  go  elsewhither  ; — that,  in  a  word, 
it  ought  to  prepare  incessantly  for  decent  departure,  before 
indecent  departure,  ignominious  drumming  out,  nay  savage 
smiting  out  and  burning  out,  overtake  it !  Alas,  was  that 
such  new  tidings  ?  Is  it  not  from  of  old  indubitable,  that 
Untruth,  Injustice  which  is  but  acted  untruth,  has  no  power 
to  continue  in  this  true  universe  of  ours  ?  The  tidings  was 
world-old,  or  older,  as  old  as  the  Fall  of  Lucifer  :  and  yet  in 
that  epoch  unhappily  it  was  new  tidings,  unexpected,  incredi- 
ble ;  and  there  had  to  be  such  earthquakes  and  shakings  of 
the  nations  before  it  could  be  listened  to,  and  laid  to  heart 
even  slightly  !  Let  us  lay  it  to  heart,  let  us  know  it  well  that 
new  shakings  be  not  needed.  Known  and  laid  to  heart  it 
mast  everywhere  be,  before  peace  can  pretend  to  come.  This 
seems  to  us  the  secret  of  our  convulsed  era  ;  this  which  is  so 
easily  written,  which  is  and  has  been  and  will  be  so  hard  to 
bring  to  pass.  All  true  men,  high  and  low,  each  in  his  sphere, 
are  consciously  or  unconsciously  bringing  it  to  pass  ;  all  false 
and  half-true  men  are  fruitlessly  spending  themselves  to  hin- 
der it  from  coming  to  pass. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 

.  From  all  which  enormous  events,  with  truths  old  and 
new  embodied  in  them,  what  innumerable  practical  infer- 
ences are  to  be  drawn !  Events  are  written  lessons,  glaring 
in  huge  hieroglyphic  picture-writing,  that  all  may  read  and 
know  them  :  the  terror  and  horror  they  inspire  is  but  the 
note  of  preparation  for  the  truth  they  are  to  teach  ;  a  mere 
waste  of  terror  if  that  be  not  learned.  Inferences  enough  ; 
most  didactic,  practically  applicable  in  all  departments  of 
English  things !  One  inference,  but  one  inclusive  of  all,  shall 
content  us  here  ;  this  namely  :  That  Laissez-faire  has  as  good 
as  done  its  part  in  a  great  many  provinces  ;  that  in  the  prov- 
ince of  the  Working  Classes,  Laissez-faire  having  passed  its 


40 


CHARTISM. 


New  Poor-Law,  has  reached  the  suicidal  point  and  now,  as 
felo-de-se,  lies  dying  there,  in  torchlight  meetings  and  such 
like  ;  that,  in  brief,  a  government  of  the  under  classes  by  the 
upper  on  a  principle  of  Let  atone  is  no  longer  possible  in  Eng- 
land in  these  days.  This  is  the  one  inference  inclusive  of  all 
For  there  can  be  no  acting  or  doing  of  any  hind,  till  it  be 
recognised  that  there  is  a  thing  to  be  done  ;  the  thing  once 
recognised,  doing  in  a  thousand  shapes  becomes  possible. 
The  Working  Classes  cannot  any  longer  go  on  without  govern- 
ment ;  without  being  actually  guided  and  governed  ;  England 
cannot  subsist  in  peace  till,  by  some  means  or  other,  some 
guidance  and  government  for  them  is  found. 

For,  alas,  on  us  too  the  rude  truth  has  come  home.  Wrap- 
pages and  speciosities  all  worn  off,  the  haggard  naked  fact 
speaks  to  us  :  Are  these  millions  taught  ?  Are  these  millions 
guided  ?  We  have  a  Church,  the  venerable  embodiment  of 
an  idea  which  may  well  call  itself  divine  ;  which  our  fathers 
for  long  ages,  feeling  it  to  be  divine,  have  been  embodying  as 
we  see  :  it  is  a  Church  well  furnished  with  equipments  and 
appurtenances  ;  educated  in  universities  ;  rich  in  money  ;  set 
on  high  places  that  it  may  be  conspicuous  to  all,  honoured  of 
all.  We  have  an  Aristocracy  of  landed  wealth  and  commer- 
cial wealth,  in  whose  hands  lies  the  law-making  and  the  law- 
administering  ;  an  Aristocracy  rich,  powerful,  long  secure  in 
its  place ;  an  Aristocracy  with  more  faculty  put  free  into  its 
hands  than  was  ever  before,  in  any  country  or  time,  put  into 
the  hands  of  any  class  of  men.  This  Church  answers  :  Yes,  the 
people  are  taught.  This  Aristocracy,  astonishment  in  every 
feature,  answers  :  Yes,  surely  the  people  are  guided !  Do 
we  not  pass  what  Acts  of  Parliament  are  needful ;  as  many  as 
thirty-nine  for  the  shooting  of  the  partridges  alone  ?  Are  there 
not  tread-mills,  gibbets  ;  even  hospitals,  poor-rates,  New  Poor- 
Law  ?  So  answers  Church  ;  so  answers  Aristocracy,  astonish- 
ment in  every  feature. — Fact,  in  the  meanwhile,  takes  his  luci- 
fer-box,  sets  fire  to  wheat-stacks  ;  sheds  an  all-too  dismal  light 
on  several  things.  Fact  searches  for  his  third-rate  potatoe, 
not  in  the  meekest  humour,  six-and-thirty  weeks  each  year ; 
and  does  not  find  it.    Fact  passionately  joins  Messiah  Thorn 


LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 


41 


of  Canterbury,  and  lias  himself  shot  for  a  new  fifth-monarchy 
brought  in  by  Bedlam.  Fact  holds  his  fustian-jacket  Fern- 
gericht  in  Glasgow  City.  Fact  carts  his  Petition  over  London 
streets,  begging  that  you  would  simply  have  the  goodness  to 
grant  him  universal  suffrage,  and  6  the  five  points/  by  way  of 
remedy.    These  are  not  symptoms  of  teaching  and  guiding. 

Nay,  at  bottom,  is  it  not  a  singular  thing  this  of  Laissez- 
faire,  from  the  first  origin  of  it  ?  As  good  as  an  abdication  on 
the  part  of  governors  ;  an  admission  that  they  are  henceforth 
incompetent  to  govern,  that  they  are  not  there  to  govern  at 
all,  but  to  do — one  knows  not  what !  The  universal  demand 
of  Laissez-faire  by  a  people  from  its  governors  or  upper 
classes,  is  a  soft -sounding  demand  ;  but  it  is  only  one  step 
removed  from  the  fatallest.  '  Laissez-faire,'  exclaims  a  sar- 
donic German  writer,  £  What  is  this  universal  cry  for  Laissez- 
-faire f  Does  it  mean  that  human  affairs  require  no  guid- 
'ance  ;  that  wisdom  and  forethought  cannot  guide  them  bet- 
'  ter  than  folly  and  accident  ?  Alas,  does  it  not  mean  :  "  Such 
-  guidance  is  worse  than  none  !  Leave  us  alone  of  your  guid- 
'  ance  ;  eat  your  wages,  and  sleep  !  99 '  And  now  if  guidance 
have  grown  indispensable,  and  the  sleep  continue,  what  be- 
comes of  the  sleep  and  its  wages  ? — In  those  entirely  surpris- 
ing circumstances  to  which  the  Eighteenth  Century  had 
brought  us,  in  the  time  of  Adam  Smith,  Laissez-faire  was  a 
reasonable  cry  ; — as  indeed,  in  all  circumstances,  for  a  wise 
governor  there  will  be  meaning  in  the  principle  of  it.  To 
wise  governors  you  will  cry  :  "  See  what  you  will,  and  will 
not,  let  alone."  To  unwise  governors,  to  hungry  Greeks 
throttling  down  hungry  Greeks  on  the  floor  of  a  St.  Stephens, 
you  will  cry  :  "  Let  all  things  alone  ;  for  Heaven's  sake,  med- 
dle ye  with  nothing!"  How  Laissez-faire  may  adjust  itself 
in  other  provinces  we  say  not :  but  we  do  venture  to  say,  and 
ask  whether  events  everywhere  in  world-history  and  parish- 
history,  in  all  manner  of  dialects  are  not  saying  it,  That  in 
regard  to  the  lower  orders  of  society,  and  their  governance  and 
guidance,  the  principle  of  Laissez-faire  has  terminated,  and  is 
no  longer  applicable  at  all,  in  this  Europe  of  ours,  still  less 
in  this  England  of  ours.    Not  misgovernment,  nor  yet  no- 


42 


CHARTISM. 


government  :  only  government  will  now  serve.  What  is  the 
meaning  of  the  'five  points/ if  we  will  understand  them? 
What  are  all  popular  commotions  and  maddest  bellowings, 
from  Peterloo  to  the  Place-de-Greve  itself?  Bellowings,  in- 
articulate  cries  as  of  a  dumb  creature  in  rage  and  pain  ;  to 
the  ear  of  wisdom  they  are  inarticulate  prayers  :  "  Guide  me, 
govern  me !  I  am  mad,  and  miserable,  and  cannot  guide  my- 
self ! "  Surely  of  all  'rights  of  man,'  this  right  of  the  igno- 
rant man  to  be  guided  by  the  wiser,  to  be,  gently  or  forcibly, 
held  in  the  true  course  by  him,  is  the  indisputablest.  Nature 
herself  ordains  it  from  the  first ;  Society  struggles  towards 
perfection  by  enforcing  and  accomplishing  it  more  and  more. 
If  Freedom  have  any  meaning,  it  means  enjoyment  of  this 
right,  wherein  all  other  rights  are  enjoyed.  It  is  a  sacred 
right  and  duty,  on  both  sides  ;  and  the  summary  of  all  social 
duties  whatsoever  between  the  two.  Why  does  the  one  toil 
with  his  lmnds,  if  the  other  be  not  to  toil,  still  more  un- 
weariedly,  with  heart  and  head  ?  The  brawny  craftsman  finds 
it  no  child's  play  to  mould  his  unpliant  rugged  masses ; 
neither  is  guidance  of  men  a  dilettantism  :  what  it  becomes 
when  treated  as  a  delettantism,  we  may  see  !  The  wild  horse 
bounds  homeless  through  the  wilderness,  is  not  led  to  stall 
and  manger :  but  neither  does  he  toil  for  you,  but  for  himself 
only. 

Democracy,  we  are  well  aware,  what  is  called  £  self-govern- 
ment '  of  the  multitude  by  the  multitude,  is  in  words  the  thing 
everywhere  passionately  clamoured  for  at  present.  Democ- 
rac}r  makes  rapid  progress  in  these  latter  times,  and  ever  more 
rapid,  in  a  perilous  accelerative  ratio  ;  towards  democracy, 
and  that  only,  the  progress  of  things  is  everywhere  tending 
as  to  the  final  goal  and- winning-post.  So  think,  so  clamour 
the  multitudes  everywhere.  And  yet  all  men  may  see,  whose 
sight  is  good  for  much,  that  in  democracy  can  lie  no  finality  ; 
that  with  the  completest  winning  of  democracy  there  is  noth- 
ing yet  won, — except  emptiness,  and  the  free  chance  to  win  ! 
Democracy  is,  by  the  nature  of  it,  a  self-cancelling  business  : 
and  gives  in  the  long-run  a  net-result  of  zero.  Where  no 
government  is  wanted,  save  that  of  the  parish-constable,  as  in 


LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 


43 


America  with  its  boundless  soil,  every  man  being  able  to  find 
work  and  recompense  for  himself,  democracy  may  subsist ; 
not  elsewhere,  except  briefly,  as  a  swift  transition  towards 
something  other  and  farther.  Democracy  never  }^et,  that  we 
heard  of,  was  able  to  accomplish  much  work,  beyond  that 
same  cancelling  of  itself.  Borne  and  Athens  are  themes  for 
the  schools  ;  unexceptionable  for  that  purpose.  In  Rome  and 
Athens,  as  elsewhere,  if  we  look  practically,  we  shall  find  that 
it  was  not  by  loud  voting  and  debating  of  many,  but  by  wise 
insight  and  ordering  of  a  few  that  the  work  was  done.  So  is 
it  ever,  so  will  it  ever  be.  The  French  Convention  was  a 
Parliament  elected  'by  the  five  points,'  with  ballot-boxes,  uni- 
versal suffrages,  and  what  not,  as  perfectly  as  Parliament  can 
hope  to  be  in  this  world  ;  and  had  indeed  a  pretty  spell  of 
work  to  do,  and  did  it.  The  French  Convention  had  to  cease 
from  being  a  free  Parliament,  and  become  more  arbitrary  than 
any  Sultan  Bajazet,  before  it  could  so  much  as  subsist.  It 
had  to  purge  out  its  argumentative  Gironclins,  elect  its  Su- 
preme Committee  of  Salut,  guillotine  into  silence  and  extinc- 
tion all  that  gainsay ed  it,  and  rule  and  work  literally  by  the 
sternest  despotism  ever  seen  in  Europe,  before  it  could  rule 
at  all.  Napoleon  was  not  president  of  a  republic  ;  Cromwell 
tried  hard  to  rule  in  that  way,  but  found  that  he  could  not. 
These,  'the  armed  soldiers  of  democracy,'  had  to  chain  democ- 
racy under  their  feet,  and  become  despots  over  it,  before  they 
could  work  out  the  earnest  obscure  purpose  of  democracy  it- 
self !  Democracy,  take  it  where  you  will  in  our  Europe,  is 
found  but  as  a  regulated  method  of  rebellion  and  abrogation  ; 
it  abrogates  the  old  arrangement  of  things  ;  and  leaves,  as  we 
say,  zero  and  vacuity  for  the  institution  of  a  new  arrangement. 
It  is  the  consummation  of  No-government  and  Laissez-faire. 
It  may  be  natural  for  our  Europe  at  present ;  but  cannot  be 
the  ultimatum  of  it.  Not  towards  the  impossibility,  'self- 
government  '  of  a  multitude  by  a  multitude  ;  but  towards  some 
possibility,  government  by  the  wisest,  does  bewildered  Europe 
struggle.  The  blessedest  possibility :  not  misgovernment, 
not  Laissez-faire,  but  veritable  government !  Cannot  one  dis- 
cern too,  across  all  democratic  turbulence,  clattering  of  ballot- 


CHARTISM. 


boxes  and  infinite  sorrowful  jangle,  needful  or  not,  that  this 
at  bottom  is  the  wish  and  prayer  of  all  human  hearts,  every- 
where and  at  all  times  :  "  Give  me  a  leader  ;  a  true  leader,  not 
a  false  sham-leader  ;  a  true  leader,  that  he  may  guide  me  on 
the  true  way,  that  I  may  be  loyal  to  him,  that  I  may  swear 
fealty  to  him  and  follow  him,  and  feel  that  it  is  well  with  me  !  " 
The  relation  of  the  taught  to  their  teacher,  of  the  loyal  sub- 
ject to  his  guiding  king,  is,  under  one  shape  or  another,  the 
vital  element  of  human  Society  ;  indispensable  to  it,  perennial 
in  it ;  without  which,  as  a  body  reft  of  its  soul,  it  falls  down 
into  death,  and  with  horrid  noisome  dissolution  passes  away 
and  disappears. 

But  verily  in  these  times,  with  their  new  stern  Evangel,  that 
Speciosities  which  are  not  Kealities  can  no  longer  be,  all  Aris- 
tocracies, Priesthoods,  Persons  in  Authority,  are  called  upon 
to  consider.  What  is  an  Aristocracy  ?  A  corporation  of  the 
Best,  of  the  Bravest.  To  this  joyfully,  with  heart-loyalty,  do 
men  pay  the  half  of  their  substance,  to  equip  and  decorate 
their  Best,  to  lodge  them  in  palaces,  to  set  them  high  over  all. 
For  it  is  of  the  nature  of  men,  in  every  time,  to  honour  and 
love  their  Best ;  to  know  no  limits  in  honouring  them.  "What- 
soever Aristocracy  is  still  a  corporation  of  the  Best,  is  safe  from 
all  peril,  and  the  land  it  rules  is  a  safe  and  blessed  land.  What- 
soever Aristocracy  does  not  even  attempt  to  be  that,  but  only 
to  wear  the  clothes  of  that,  is  not  safe  ;  neither  is  the  land  it 
rules  in  safe  !  For  this  now  is  our  sad  lot,  that  we  must  find 
a  real  Aristocracy,  that  an  apparent  Aristocracy,  how  plausible 
soever,  has  become  inadequate  for  us.  One  way  or  other,  the 
world  will  absolutely  need  to  be  governed  ;  if  not  by  this  class 
of  men,  then  by  that.  One  can  predict,  without  gift  of  proph- 
ecy, that  the  era  of  routine  is  nearly  ended.  Wisdom  and  fac« 
ulty  alone,  faithful,  valiant,  ever-zealous,  not  pleasant  but  pain- 
ful, continual  effort,  will  suffice.  Cost  what  it  may,  by  one 
means  or  another,  the  toiling  multitudes  of  this  perplexed 
over-crowded  Europe,  must  and  will  find  governors.  '  Laissez- 
faire,  Leave  them  to  do  ? '  The  thing  they  will  do,  if  so  left, 
is  too  frightful  to  think  of  !    It  has  been  done  once,  in  sight 


LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 


45 


of  the  whole  earth,  in  these  generations  ;  can  it  need  to  be 
done  a  second  time  ? 

For  a  Priesthood,  in  like  manner,  whatsoever  its  titles,  pos- 
sessions, professions,  there  is  but  one  question  :  does  it  teach 
and  spiritually  guide  this  people,  yea  or  no  ?  If  yea,  then  is 
all  well.  But  if  no,  then  let  it  strive  earnestly  to  alter,  for  as 
yet  there  is  nothing  well !  Nothing,  we  say  :  and  indeed  is  not 
this  that  we  call  spiritual  guidance  properly  the  soul  of  the 
whole,  the  life  and  eyesight  of  the  wThole  ?  The  world  asks  of 
its  Church  in  these  times,  more  passionately  than  of  any  other 
Institution  any  question,  " Canst  thou  teach  us  or  not?" — A 
Priesthood  in  France,  when  the  world  asked,  "  What  canst 
thou  do  for  us  ?"  answered  only,  aloud  and  ever  louder,  "  Are 
we  not  of  God  ?  Invested  with  all  power  ?  " — till  at  length 
France  cut  short  this  controversy  too,  in  what  frightful  way 
we  know.  To  all  men  who  believed  in  the  Church,  to  all  men 
who  believed  in  God  and  the  soul  of  man,  there- was  no  issue 
of  the  French  Revolution  half  so  sorrowful  as  that.  France 
cast  out  its  benighted  blind  Priesthood  into  destruction  ;  yet 
with  what  a  loss  to  France  also  !  A  solution  of  continuity, 
what  wTe  may  well  call  such  ;  and  this  where  continuity  is  so 
momentous  :  the  New,  whatever  it  may  be,  cannot  now  grow 
out  of  the  Old,  but  is  severed  sheer  asunder  from  the  Old, — 
how  much  lies  wasted  in  that  gap  !  That  one  whole  genera- 
tion of  thinkers  should  be  without  a  religion  to  believe,  or 
even  to  contradict  ;  that  Christianity,  in  thinking  France, 
should  as  it  were  fade  away  so  long  into  a  remote  extraneous 
tradition,  was  one  of  the  saddest  facts  connected  with  the 
future  of  that  country.  Look  at  such  Political  and  Moral 
Philosophies,  St.-Simonisms,  Robert-Macairisms,  and  the  'Lit- 
erature of  Desperation  ' !  Kingship  was  perhaps  but  a  cheap 
waste,  compared  with  this  of  the  Priestship  ;  under  which 
France  still,  all  but  unconsciously,  labours  ;  and  may  long  la- 
bour, remediless  the  while.  Let  others  consider  it,  and  take 
warning  by  it !  France  is  a  pregnant  example  in  all  ways. 
Aristocracies  that  do  not  govern,  Priesthoods  that  do  not 
teach  ;  the  misery  of  that,  and  the  misery  of  altering  that, — ■ 
are  written  in  Belshazzar  fire-letters  on  the  history  of  France. 


46 


CHARTISM. 


Or  does  the  British  reader,  safe  in  the  assurance  that '  Eng. 
land  is  not  France/  call  all  this  unpleasant  doctrine  of  ours 
ideology,  perfectability,  and  a  vacant  dream  ?  Does  the  Brit- 
ish reader,  resting  on  the  faith  that  what  has  been  these  two 
generations  was  from  the  beginning,  and  will  be  to  the  end, 
assert  to  himself  that  things  are  already  as  they  can  be,  as 
they  must  be  ;  that  on  the  whole,  no  Upper  Classes  did  ever 
f  govern  '  the  Lower,  in  this  sense  of  governing  ?  Believe  it 
11m*,  O  British  reader!  Man  is  man  everywhere  ;  dislikes  to 
have  '  sensible  species  '  and  '  ghosts  of  defunct  bodies  '  foisted 
on  him,  in  England  even  as  in  France.  How  much  the  Upper 
Classes  did  actually,  in  any  of  the  most  perfect  Feudal  time, 
return  to  the  Under  by  way  of  recompense,  in  government, 
guidance,  protection,  we  will  not  undertake  to  specify  here. 
In  Charity-Balls,  Soup-Kitchens,  in  Quarter-Sessions,  Prison- 
Discipline  and  Treadmills,  we  can  well  believe  the  old  Feudal 
Aristocracy  not  to  have  surpassed  the  new.  Yet  we  do  say 
that  the  old  Aristocracy  were  the  governors  of  the  Lower 
Classes,  the  guides  of  the  Lower  Classes  ;  and  even,  at  bottom, 
that  they  existed  as  an  Aristocracy  because  they  were  found 
adequate  for  that  Not  by  Charity-Balls  and  Soup-Kitchens  ; 
not  so  ;  far  otherwise  !  But  it  was  their  happiness  that,  in 
struggling  for  their  own  objects,  they  had  to  govern  the  Lower 
Classes,  even  in  this  sense  of  governing.  For,  in  one  word, 
Cash  Payment  had  not  then  grown  to  be  the  universal  sole 
nexus  of  man  to  man  ;  it  was  something  other  than  money 
that  the  high  then  expected  from  the  low,  and  could  not  live 
without  getting  from  the  low.  Not  as  buyer  and  seller  alone, 
of  land  or  what  else  it  might  be,  but  in  many  senses  still  as 
soldier  and  captain,  as  clansman  and  head,  as  loyal  subject 
and  guiding  king,  was  the  low  related  to  the  high.  With  the 
supreme  triumph  of  Cash,  a  changed  time  has  entered  ;  there 
must  a  changed  Aristocracy  enter.  We  invite  the  British 
reader  to  meditate  earnestly  on  these  things. 

Another  thing,  which  the  British  reader  often  reads  and 
hears  in  this  time,  is  worth  his  meditating  for  a  moment : 
That  Society  '  exists  for  the  protection  of  property.'  To  which 
it  is  added,  that  the  poor  man  also  has  property,  namely,  his 


LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 


47 


'labour,'  and  the  fifteen-pence  or  three -and-sixpence  a-clay 
he  can  get  for  that.  True  enough,  O  friends,  '  for  protecting 
property  ; '  most  true  :  and  indeed  if  you  will  once  sufficiently 
enforce  that  Eighth  Commandment,  the  whole  '  rights  of  man ' 
are  well  cared  for :  I  know  no  better  definition  of  the  rights 
of  man.  Thou  shalt  not  steal,  thou  shalt  not  be  stolen  from : 
what  a  Society  were  that  ;  Plato's  Republic,  Moore's  Utopia 
mere  emblems  of  it !  Give  every  man  what  is  his,  the  accu- 
ate  price  of  what  he  has  done  and  been,  no  man  shall  any 
more  complain,  neither  shall  the  earth  suffer  any  more.  For 
the  protection  of  property,  in  very  truth,  and  for  that  alone  ! 
— And  now  wThat  is  thy  property  ?  That  parchment  title-deed, 
that  purse  thou  buttonest  in  thy  breeches-pocket  ?  Is  that 
thy  valuable  property  ?  Unhappy  brother,  most  poor  insol- 
vent brother,  I  without  parchment  at  all,  with  purse  of tenest 
in  the  flaccid  state,  imponderous,  which  will  not  fling  against 
the  wind,  have  quite  other  property  than  that !  I  have  the 
miraculous  breath  of  Life  in  me,  breathed  into  my  nostrils 
by  Almighty  God.  I  have  affections,  thoughts,  a  god-given 
capability  to  be  and  do ;  rights,  therefore, — the  right  for  in- 
stance to  thy  love  if  I  love  thee,  to  thy  guidance  if  I  obey  thee  : 
the  strangest  rights,  whereof  in  church-pulpits  one  still  hears 
something,  though  almost  unintelligible  now  ;  rights,  stretch- 
ing high  into  Immensity,  far  into  Eternity !  Fifteen-pence 
a-day  ;  three-and-sixpence  a-day  ;  eight  hundred  pounds  and 
odd  a-day,  dost  thou  call  that  my  property  ?  I  value  that  but 
little ;  little  all  I  could  purchase  with  that.  For  truly,  as  is 
said,  what  matters  it  ?  In  torn  boots,  in  soft-hung  carriages- 
and-four,  a  man  gets  always  to  his  journey's  end.  Socrates 
walked  barefoot,  or  in  wooden  shoes,  and  yet  arrived  happily. 
They  never  asked  him,  What  shoes  or  conveyance?  never, 
What  wages  hadst  thou  ?  but  simply,  "What  work  didst  thou  ? 
Property,  O  brother?  'Of  my  very  body  I  have  but  a  life- 
rent.' As  for  this  flaccid  purse  of  mine,  'tis  something,  noth- 
ing ;  has  been  the  slave  of  pickpockets,  cutthroats,  Jew-brok- 
ers, gold-dust  robbers  ;  'twas  his,  'tis  mine  ; — 'tis  thine,  if 
thou  care  much  to  steal  it.  But  my  soul,  breathed  into  me 
by  God,  my  Me  and  what  capability  is  there  ;  that  is  mine, 


48 


CHARTISM, 


and  I  will  resist  the  stealing  of  it.  I  call  that  mine  and  not 
thine  ;  I  will  keep  that,  and  do  what  work  I  can  with  it :  God 
has  given  it  me,  the  Devil  shall  not  take  it  away  ! — Alas,  my 
friends,  Society  exists  and  has  existed  for  a  great  many  pur- 
poses, not  so  easy  to  specify  ! 

Society,  it  is  understood,  does  not  in  any  age,  prevent  a 
man  from  being  what  he  can  be.  A  sooty  African  can  become 
a  Toussaint  L'ouverture,  a  murderous  Three-fingered  JackJ 
let  the  yellow  West  Indies  say  to  it  what  they  will.  A  Scot- 
tish Poet,  '  proud  of  his  name  and  country,'  can  apply  fervently 
to  '  Gentlemen  of  the  Caledonian  Hunt,'  and  become  a  gauger 
of  beer-barrels,  and  tragical  immortal  broken-hearted  Singer  ; 
the  stifled  echo  of  his  melody  audible  through  long  centuries, 
one  other  note  in  '  that  sacred  Miserere '  that  rises  up  to 
Heaven,  out  of  all  times  and  lands.  What  I  can  be  thou  de- 
cidedly #wilt  not  hinder  me  from  being.  Nay  even  for  being 
what  I  could  be,  I  have  the  strangest  claims  on  thee, — not 
convenient  to  adjust  at  present !  Protection  of  breeches- 
pocket  property  ?  O  reader,  to  what  shifts  is  poor  Society 
reduced,  struggling  to  give  still  some  account  of  herself,  in 
epochs  when  Cash  Payment  has  become  the  sole  nexus  of  man 
to  men  !  On  the  whole,  we  will  advise  Society  not  to  talk  at 
all  about  what  she  exists  for  ;  but  rather  with  her  whole  in- 
dustry to  exist,  to  try  how  she  can  keep  existing  !  That  is 
her  best  plan.  She  may  depend  upon  it,  if  she  ever,  by  cruel 
chance,  did  come  to  exist  only  for  protection  of  breeches- 
pocket  property,  she  would  lose  very  soon  the  gift  of  pro- 
tecting even  that,  and  find  her  career  in  our  lower  world  on 
the  point  of  terminating  ! — 

For  the  rest,  that  in  the  most  perfect  Feudal  Ages,  the 
Ideal  of  Aristocracy  nowhere  lived  in  vacant  serene  purity  as 
an  Ideal,  but  always  as  a  poor  imperfect  Actual,  little  heeding 
or  not  knowing  at  all  that  an  Ideal  lay  in  it, — this  too  we  will 
cheerfully  admit.  Imperfection,  it  is  known,  cleaves  to  human 
things  ;  far  is  the  Ideal  departed  from,  in  most  times  ;  very 
far  !  And  yet  so  long  as  an  Ideal  (any  soul  of  Truth)  does, 
in  never  so  confused  a  manner,  exist  and  work  within  the 


NOT  LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 


49 


Actual,  it  is  a  tolerable  business.  Not  so,  when  the  Ideal  has 
entirely  departed,  and  the  Actual  owns  to  itself  that  it  has 
no  Idea,  no  soul  of  Truth  any  longer  :  at  that  degree  of  im- 
perfection human  things  cannot  continue  living  ;  they  are 
obliged  to  alter  or  expire,  when  they  attain  to  that.  Blotches 
and  diseases  exist  on  the  skin  and  deeper,  the  heart  continu- 
ing whole  ;  but  it  is  another  matter  when  the  heart  itself  be- 
comes diseased  ;  when  there  is  no  heart,  but  a  monstrous 
gangrene  pretending  to  exist  there  as  heart ! 

On  the  whole,  O  reader,  thou  wilt  find  everywhere  that 
things  which  have  had  an  existence  among  men  have  first  of 
all  had  to  have  a  truth  and  worth  in  them,  and  were  not  sem- 
blances but  realities.  Nothing  but  a  reality  ever  yet  got  men 
to  pay  bed  and  board  to  it  for  long.  Look  at  Mahometanism 
itself !  Dalai-Lamaism,  even  Dalai-Lamaism,  one  rejoices  to 
discover,  may  be  worth  its  victuals  in  this  world  ;  not  a  quack- 
ery but  a  sincerity  ;  not  a  nothing  but  a  something  !  The 
mistake  of  those  who  believe  that  fraud,  force,  injustice, 
whatsoever  untrue  thing,  howsoever  cloaked  and  decorated, 
was  ever  or  can  ever  be  the  principle  of  man's  relations  to 
man,  is  great,  and  the  greatest.  It  is  the  error  of  the  infidel  ; 
in  whom  the  truth  as  yet  is  not.  It  is  an  error  pregnant  with 
mere  errors  and  miseries  ;  an  error  fatal,  lamentable,  to  be 
abandoned  by  all  men. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

NOT  LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 

How  an  Aristocracy,  in  these  present  times  and  circum= 
stances,  could,  if  never  so  well  disposed,  set  about  governing 
the  Upper  Class?  What  they  should  do  ;  endeavour  or  attempt 
to  do  ?  That  is  even  the  question  of  questions  : — the  question 
which  they  have  to  solve  ;  which  it  is  our  utmost  function  at 
present  to  tell  them,  lies  there  for  solving,  and  must  and  will 
be  solved. 

Insoluble  we  cannot  fancy  it.    One  select  class  Society  has 
furnished  with  wealth,  intelligence,  leisure,  means  outward 
4 


50 


CHARTISM. 


and  inward  for  governing  ;  another  huge  class,  furnished  by 
Society  with  none  of  these  things,  declares  that  it  must  be 
governed  :  Negative  stands  fronting  Positive  ;  if  Negative  and 
Positive  cannot  unite, — it  will  be  worse  for  both  !  Let  the 
faculty  and  earnest  constant  effort  of  England  combine  round 
this  matter  ;  let  it  once  be  recognised  as  a  vital  matter.  Innu- 
merable things  our  Upper  Classes  and  Lawgivers  might '  do  ; ' 
but  the  preliminary  of  all  things,  we  must  repeat,  is  to  know 
that  a  thing  must  needs  be  done.  We  lead  them  here  to  the 
shore  of  a  boundless  continent  ;  ask  them,  Whether  they  do 
not  with  their  own  eyes  see  it,  see  strange  symptoms  of  it, 
lying  huge,  dark,  unexplored,  inevitable ;  full  of  hope,  but 
also  full  of  difficulty,  savagery,  almost  of  despair  ?  Let  them 
enter  ;  they  must  enter ;  Time  and  Necessity  have  brought 
them  hither  ;  where  they  are  is  no  continuing  !  Let  them 
enter ;  the  first  step  once  taken,  the  next  will  have  become 
clearer,  all  future  steps  will  become  possible.  It  is  a  great 
problem  for  all  of  us  ;  but  for  themselves,  we  may  say,  more 
than  for  any.  On  them  chiefly,  as  the  expected  solvers  of  it, 
will  the  failure  of  a  solution  first  fall.  One  wTay  or  other 
there  must  and  will  be  a  solution. 

True,  these  matters  lie  far,  very  far  indeed,  from  the  '  usual 
habits  of  Parliament,'  in  late  times  ;  from  the  routine  course 
of  any  Legislative  or  Administrative  body  of  men  that  exists 
among  us.  Too  true  !  And  that  is  even  the  thing  we  com- 
plain of  :  had  the  mischief  been  looked  into  as  it  gradually 
rose,  it  would  not  have  attained  this  magnitude.  That  self- 
cancelling  Donothingism  and  Laissez-faire  should  have  got  so 
ingrained  into  our  Practice,  is  the  source  of  .all  these  miseries. 
It  is  too  true  that  Parliament,  for  the  matter  of  near  a  cen- 
tury now,  has  been  able  to  undertake  the  adjustment  of  al- 
most one  thing  alone,  of  itself  and  its  own  interests  ;  leaving 
other  interests  to  rub  along  very  much  as  they  could  and 
would.  True,  this  was  the  practice  of  the  whole  Eighteenth 
Century  ;  and  struggles  still  to  prolong  itself  into  the  Nine- 
teenth,— which  howrever  is  no  longer  the  time  for  it !  Those 
Eighteenth-century  Parliaments,  one  may  hope,  will  become  a 
curious  object  one  day.    Are  not  these  same  '  Memoires  -  of 


NOT  LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 


51 


Horace  Walpole,  to  an  unparliamentary  eye,  already  a  curious 
object  ?  One  of  the  clearest-sighted  men  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century  writes  down  his  Parliamentary  observation  of  it  there  ; 
a  determined  despiser  and  merciless  dissector  of  cant  ;  a  lib- 
eral withal,  one  who  will  go  all  lengths  for  the  '  glorious  rev- 
olution' and  resist  Tory  principles  to  the  death  :  he  writes, 
with  an  indignant  elegiac  feeling,  how  Mr.  This,  who  had 
voted  so  and  then  voted  so,  and  was  the  son  of  this  and  the 
brother  of  that,  and  had  such  claims  to  the  fat  appointment, 
was  nevertheless  scandalously  postponed  to  Mr.  That ; — where- 
upon are  not  the  affairs  of  this  nation  in  a  bad  way  ?  How 
hungry  Greek  meets  hungry  Greek  on  the  floor  of  St.  Ste- 
phens, and  wrestles  him  and  throttles  him  till  he  has  to  cry, 
Hold  !  the  office  is  thine  ! — of  this  does  Horace  write. — One 
must  say,  the  destinies  of  nations  do  not  always  rest  entirely 
on  Parliament.  One  must  say,  it  is  a  wonderful  affair  that 
science  of  c  government '  as  practised  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury of  the  Christian  era,  and  still  struggling  to  practise  it- 
self. One  must  say,  it  was  a  lucky  century  that  could  get  it 
so  practised  :  a  century  which  had  inherited  richly  from  its 
predecessors  ;  and  also  which  did,  not  unnaturally,  bequeath 
to  its  successors  a  French  Eevolution,  general  overturn,  and 
reign  of  terror  ; — intimating,  in  most  audible  thunder;  confla- 
gration, guillotinement,  cannonading  and  universal  war  and 
earthquake,  that  such  century  with  its  practices  had  ended* 

Ended  ; — for  decidedly  that  course  of  procedure  will  no 
longer  serve.  Parliament  will  absolutely,  with  whatever  effort, 
have  to  lift  itself  out  of  those  deep  ruts  of  donothing  routine  ; 
and  learn  to  say,  on  all  sides,  something  more  edifying  than 
Laissez-faire.  If  Parliament  cannot  learn  it,  what  is  to  become 
of  Parliament  ?  The  toiling  millions  of  England  ask  of  their 
English  Parliament  foremost  of  all,  Canst  thou  govern  us  or 
not  ?  Parliament  with  its  privileges  is  strong  ;  but  Necessity 
and  the  Laws  of  Nature  are  stronger  than  it.  If  Parliament 
cannot  do  this  thing,  Parliament  we  prophesy  will  do  some 
other  thing  and  things  which,  in  the  strangest  and  not  the 
happiest  way,  will  forward  its  being  done, — not  much  to  the 
advantage  of  Parliament  probably  !    Done,  one  way  or  other, 


52  CHARTISM.  , 

the  tiling  must  be.  In  these  complicated  times,  with  Cash 
Payment  as  the  sole  nexus  between  man  and  man,  the  Toiling 
Classes  of  mankind  declare,  in  their  confused  but  most  em- 
phatic way,  to  the  Untoiling,  that  they  will  be  governed  ;  that 
they  must — under  penalty  of  Chartisms,  Thuggeries,  Rick- 
burnings,  and  even  blacker  things  than  those.  Vain  also  is  it 
to  think  that  the  misery  of  one  class,  of  the  great  universal 
under  class,  can  be  isolated  and  kept  apart  and  peculiar,  down 
in  that  class.  By  infallible  contagion,  evident  enough  to  re- 
flection, evident  even  to  Political  Economy  that  will  reflect, 
the  misery  of  the  lowest  spreads  upwards  and  upwards  till  it 
reaches  the  very  highest  ;  till  all  has  grown  miserable,  palpa- 
bly false  and  wrong ;  and  poor  drudges  hungering  '  on  meal- 
husks  and  boiled  grass '  do,  by  circuitous  but  sure  methods, 
bring  kings'  heads  to  the  block ! 

Cash  Payment  the  sole  nexus  ;  and  there  are  so  many 
things  which  cash  will  not  pay  !  Cash  is  a  great  miracle  ;  yet 
it  has  not  all  power  in  Heaven,  nor  even  on  Earth.  '  Supply 
and  demand  5  wTe  will  honour  also  ;  and  yet  how  many  'de- 
mands '  are  there,  entirely  indispensable,  which  have  to  go 
elsewhere  than  to  the  shops,  and  produce  quite  other  than 
cash,  before  they  can  get  their  supply !  On  the  whole,  what 
astonishing  payments  does  cash  make  in  this  world  !  Of  your 
Samuel  Johnson  furnished  with  '  fourpence  halfpenny  a-day,' 
and  solid  lodging  at  nights  on  the  paved  streets,  as  his  pay- 
ment, we  do  not  speak  ; — not  in  the  way  of  complaint :  it  is 
a  world- old  business  for  the  like  of  him,  that  same  arrange- 
ment or  a  worse  ;  perhaps  the  man,  for  his  own  uses,  had 
need  even  of  that  and  of  no  better.  Nay  is  not  Society,  busy 
with  its  Talfourd  Copyright  Bill  and  the  like,  struggling  to 
do  something  effectual  for  that  man  ; — enacting  with  all  indus- 
try that  his  own  creation  be  accounted  his  own  manufacture, 
and  continue  unstolen,  on  his  own  market-stand,  for  so  long 
as  sixty  years  ?  Perhaps  Society  is  right  there  ;  for  discrep- 
ancies on  that  side  too  may  become  excessive.  All  men  are 
not  patient  docile  Johnsons  ;  some  of  them  are  half-mad  in- 
flammable Bosseaus.  Such,  in  peculiar  times,  you  may  drive 
too  far,    In  France,  for  example,  Society  was  not  destitute  of 


NEW  ERAS. 


53 


cash  ;  Society  contrived  to  pay  Philippe  d'Orleans  not  yet  Ega- 
lite  three  hundred  thousand  a-year  and  odd,  for  driving  cabri- 
olets through  the  streets  of  Paris  and  other  work  done  :  but  in 
cash,  encouragement,  arrangement,  recompense  or  recognition 
of  any  kind,  it  had  nothing  to  give  this  same  half-mad  Ros- 
seau  for  his  work  done  ;  whose  brain  in  consequence,  too 
'  much  enforced  5  for  a  weak  brain,  uttered  hasty  sparks,  Con- 
trat  Social  and  the  like,  which  proved  not  so  quenchable  again  ! 
In  regard  to  that  species  of  men  too,  who  knows  whether 
Laissez-faire  itself  (which  is  Sergeant  Talfourd's  Copyright 
Bill  continued  to  eternity  instead  of  sixty  years)  will  not  turn 
out  insufficient,  and  have  to  cease,  one  day  ? —  % 

Alas,  in  regard  to  so  very  many  things,  Laissez-faire  ought 
partly  to  endeavour  to  cease  !  But  in  regard  to  poor  Sans- 
potatoe  peasants,  Trades-Union  craftsmen,  Chartist  cotton- 
spinners,  the  time  has  come  when  it  must  either  cease  or 
a  worse  thing  straightway  begin, — a  thing  of  tinder-boxes, 
vitriol-bottles,  second-hand  pistols,  a  visibly  insupportable 
thing  in  the  eyes  of  all. 


CHAPTER  VIE. 

NEW  ERAS. 

'  For  in  very  truth  it  is  a  '  new  Era  ; '  a  new  Practice  has  be- 
come indispensable  in  it.  One  has  heard  so  often  of  new 
eras,  new  and  newest  eras,  that  the  world  has  grown  rather 
empty  of  late.  Yet  new  eras  do  come  ;  there  is  no  fact  surer 
than  that  they  have  come  more  than  once.  And  always  with 
a  change  of  era,  with  a  change  of  intrinsic  conditions,  there 
had  to  be  a  change  of  practice  and  outward  relations  brought 
about, — if  not  peaceably,  then  by  violence  ;  for  brought  about 
it  had  to  be,  there  could  no  rest  come  till  then.  How  many 
eras  and  epochs,  not  noted  at  the  moment  ; — which  indeed  is 
the  blessedest  condition  of  epochs,  that  they  come  quietly, 
making  no  proclamation  of  themselves,  and  are  only  visible 
long  after :  a  Cromwell  Rebellion,  a  French  Revolution^ 
e  striking  on  the  Horologe  of  Time/  to  tell  all  mortals  what 
o'clock  it  has  become,  are  too  expensive,  if  one  could  help  it !— 


54 


CHARTISM. 


In  a  strange  rhapsodic  ■  History  of  the  Teuton  Kindred 
(Geschichte  der  Teutschen  Sippschqfl),3  not  yet  translated  into 
our  language,  we  have  found  a  Chapter  on  the  Eras  of  Eng- 
land, which,  wrere  there  room  for  it,  would  be  instructive  in 
this  place.  We  shall  crave  leave  to  excerpt  some  pages  ; 
partly  as  a  relief  from  the  too  near  vexations  of  our  own 
rather  sorrowful  Era  ;  partly  as  calculated  to  throw,  more  or 
less  obliquely,  some  degree  of  light  on  the  meanings  of  thai 
The  Author  is  anonymous  ;  but  wTe  have  heard  him  called  the 
Herr  Professor  Sauerteig,  and  indeed  think  we  know  him 
under  that  name  : 

6  Who  shall  say  what  work  and  works  this  England  has  yet 

*  to  do  ?  For  what  purpose  this  land  of  Britain  was  created, 
'  set  like  a  jewel  in  the  encircling  blue  of  Ocean  ;  and  this 
'  Tribe  of  Saxons,  fashioned  in  the  depths  of  Time,  "  on  the 
chores  of  the  Black  Sea"  or  elsewhere,  "out  of  Harzebirge 
'  rock  "  or  whatever  other  material,  was  sent  travelling  hither- 
'  ward  ?    No  man  can  say  :  it  was  for  a  work,  and  for  works, 

*  incapable  of  announcement  in  words.  Thou  seest  them 
'  there,  these  works  ;  part  of  them  stand  done,  and  visible  to 

*  the  eye  ;  even  these  thou  canst  not  name:  how  much  less 

*  the  others  still  matter  of  prophecy  only ! — They  live  and 

*  labour  there,  these  twenty  million  Saxon  men ;  they  have 
'  been  born  into  this  mystery  of  life  out  of  the  darkness  of 
'  Past  Time  : — how  changed  now  since  the  first  Father  and 
1  first  Mother  of  them  set  forth,  quitting  the  Tribe  of  Theuth, 
'  with  passionate  farewell,  under  questionable  auspices ;  on 
'  scanty  bullock-cart,  if  they  had  even  bullocks  and  a  cart ; 
'  with  axe  and  hunting-spear,  to  subdue  a  portion  of  our  com- 
'  mon  Planet !  This  Nation  now  has  cities  and  seedfields,  has 
'  spring- vans,  dray-waggons,  Long-acre  carriages,  nay  railway 
'  trains  ;  has  coined  money,  exchange-bills,  laws,  books,  war- 
'  fleets,  spinning  jennies,  warehouses  and  West-India  Docks : 
'  see  what  it  has  built  and  done,  what  it  can  and  will  yet  build 

*  and  do  !  These  umbrageous  jjleasure- woods,  green  meadows, 
'  shaven  stubble-fields,  smooth-sweeping  roads  ;  these  high- 
'  domed  cities,  and  what  they  hold  and  bear  ;  this  mild  Good- 


NEW  ERAS. 


55 


'morrow  which  the  stranger  bids  thee,  equitable,  nay  for- 

*  bearant  if  need  were,  judicially  calm  and  law-observing 
'towards  thee  a  stranger,  what  work  has  it  not  cost?  How 
£  many  brawny  arms,  generation  after  generation,  sank  down 
'  wearied  ;  how  many  noble  hearts,  toiling  while  life  lasted, 
'  and  wise  heads  that  wore  themselves  dim  with  scanning  and 
€  discerning,  before  this  waste  Whitecliff,  Albion  so-called, 
'with  its  other  Cassiterides  Tin  Islands,  became  a  British 
6  Empire  !    The  stream  of  World-History  has  altered  its  com- 

*  plexion  ;  Romans  are  dead  out,  English  are  come  in.  The 
£  red  broad  mark  of  Romanhood,  stamped  ineffaceably  on  that 

*  Chart  of  Time,  has  disappeared  from  the  present,  and  be- 
£  longs  only  to  the  past.  England  plays  its  part ;  England  too 
£  has  a  mark  to  leave,  and  we  will  hope  none  of  the  least  sig- 
£ nificant.  Of  a  truth,  whosoever  had,  with  the  bodily  eye, 
'  seen  Hengst  and  Horsa  mooring  on  the  mud-beach  of 
£  Thanet,  on  that  spring  morning  of  the  Year  449  ;  and  then, 
£  with  the  spiritual  eye,  looked  forward  to  New  York,  Gal-. 
£ cutta,  Sidney  Cove,  across  the  ages  and  the  oceans  ;  and 
£  thought  what  Wellingtons,  WTashingtons,  Shakspears,  Mil- 

■  tons,  Watts,  Arkwrights,  William  Pitts  and  Davie  Crocketts 
£  had  to  issue  from  that  business,  and  do  their  several  task- 
£  words  so, — he  would  have  said,  those  leather-boats  of  Hengst's 
'  had  a  kind  of  cargo  in  them  !    A  genealogic  My  thus  superior 

■  to  any  in  the  old  Greek,  to  almost  any  in  the  old  Hebrew 
£  itself ;  and  not  a  Mythus  either,  but  every  fibre  of  it  fact. 
c  An  Epic  Poem  was  there,  and  all  manner  of  poems  ;  except 
£  that  the  Poet  has  not  yet  made  his  appearance.' 

£  Six  centuries  of  obscure  endeavour,'  continues  Sauerteig, 
£  which  to  read  Historians,  you  would  incline  to  call  mere  ob- 
e  scure  slaughter,  discord,  and  misendeavour ;  of  which  all 
c  that  the  human  memory,  after  a  thousand  readings,  can  re- 
'  member,  is  that  it  resembled,  what  Milton  names  it,  the 
£  t£  flocking  and  fighting  of  kites  and  crows;"  this,  in  brief, 
£  is  the  history  of  the  Heptarchy  or  Seven  Kingdoms.  Six 
£  centuries  ;  a  stormy  springtime,  if  there  ever  was  one,  for  a 
£  Nation.  Obscure  fighting  of  kites  and  crows,  howTever,  was 
£  not  the  History  of  it ;  but  was  only  what  the  dim  Historians 


56 


CHARTISM. 


4  of  it  saw  good  to  record.  Were  not  forests  felled,  bogs 
4  drained,  fields  made  arable,  towns  built,  laws  made,  and  the 
4  Thought  and  Practice  of  men  in  man}'  ways  perfected  ?  Ven- 
4  erable  Bede  had  got  a  language  which  he  could  now  not  only 
4  speak,  but  spell  and  put  on  paper :  think  what  lies  in  that. 
4  Bemurmured  by  the  German  sea-flood  swinging  slow  with 
1  sullen  roar  against  those  hoarse  Northumbrian  rocks,  the 
4  venerable  man  set  down  several  things  in  a  legible  man- 
4  ner.  Or  was  the  smith  idle,  hammering  only  war-tools?  He 
€  had  learned  metallurgy,  stithy-work  in  general ;  and  made 
4  plough-shares  withal,  and  adzes  and  mason-hammers.  Cas- 
4  tra,  Caesters  or  Chesters,  Dons,  Tons  (Zauns,  Inclosures  or 
4  Towns),  not  a  few,  did  they  not  stand  there  ;  of  burnt  brick, 
4  of  timber,  of  lath-and-clay  ;  sending  up  the  peaceable  smoke 
4  of  hearths  ?  England  had  a  History  then  too  ;  though  no 
!  Historian  to  write  it.  Those  "  flockings  and  fightings,"  sad 
*  inevitable  necessities,  were  the  expensive  tentative  steps 
towards  some  capability  of  living  and  working  in  concert  : 
4  experiments  they  were,  not  always  conclusive,  to  ascertain 
4  who  had  the  might  over  whom,  the  right  over  whom. 

4  M.  Thierry  has  written  an  ingenious  Book,  celebrating 
4  with  considerable  pathos  the  fate  of  the  Saxons,  fallen  under 
4  that  fierce-hearted  Conquestor,  Acquirer  or  Conqueror,  as  he 
4  is  named.  M.  Thierry  professes  to  have  a  turn  for  looking 
4  at  that  side  of  things  :  the  fate  of  the  "Welsh  too  moves  him ; 
4  of  the  Celts  generally,  whom  a  fiercer  race  swept  before  them 
4  into  the  mountainous  nooks  of  the  West,  whither  they  were 
4  not  worth  following.  Noble  deeds,  according  to  M.  Thierry, 
4  were  done  by  these  unsuccessful  men,  heroic  sufferings 
4  undergone  ;  which  it  is  a  pious  duty  to  rescue  from  forget- 
4  fulness.  True,  surely !  A  tear  at  least  is  due  to  the  un- 
4  happy  :  it  is  right  and  fit  that  there  should  be  a  man  to 
4  assert  that  lost  cause  too,  and  see  what  can  still  be  made  of 
4  it.  Most  right : — and  yet  on  the  whole,  taking  matters  on 
4  that  great  scale,  what  can  we  say  but  that  the  cause  which 
4  pleased  the  gods  has  in  the  end  pleased  Cato  also  ?  Cato 
4  cannot  alter  it  ;  Cato  will  find  that  he  cannot  at  bottom  wish 
4  to  alter  it.    Might  and  Bight  do  differ  frightfully  from  hour 


NEW  ERAS. 


57 


'  to  hour  ;  but  give  them  centuries  to  try  it  in,  they  are  found 
'to  be  identical.  Whose  land  was  this  of  Britain  ?  God's 
4  who  made  it,  His  and  no  other's  it  was  and  is.  Who  of 
4  God's  creatures  had  right  to  live  in  it  ?  The  wolves  and 
4  bisons  ?  Yes  they  ;  till  one  with  a  better  right  showed  him- 
4  self.  The  Celt,  "aboriginal  savage  of  Europe,"  as  a  snarl- 
6  ing  antiquary  names  him,  arrived,  pretending  to  have  a 
i  better  right ;  and  did  accordingly,  not  without  pain  to  the 
4  bisons,  make  good  the  same.  He  had  a  better  right  to  that 
4  piece  of  God's  land  ;  namely  a  better  might  to  turn  it  to 
4  use  ; — a  might  to  settle  himself  there,  at  least,  and  try  what 
'  use  he  could  turn  it  to.  The  bisons  disappeared  ;  the  Celts 
4  took  possession,  and  tilled.  Forever,  was  it  to  be  ?  Alas, 
6  Forever  is  not  a  category  that  can  establish  itself  in  this 
4  world  of  Time.  A  world  of  Time,  by  the  very  definition  of 
4  it,  is  a  world  of  mortality  and  mutability,  of  Beginning  and 
'  Ending.  No  property  is  eternal  but  God  the  Maker's : 
4  whom  Heaven  permits  to  take  possession,  his  is  the  right  : 
4  heaven's  sanction  is  such  permission, — while  it  lasts  :  nothing 
4  more  can  be  said.  Why  does  that  hyssop  grow  there,  in  the 
4  chink  of  the  wall  ?  Because  the  whole  universe,  sufficiently 
4  occupied  otherwise,  could  not  hitherto  prevent  its  growing  ! 
4  It  has  the  might  and  the  right.  By  the  same  great  law  do 
4  Roman  Empires  establish  themselves,  Christian  Religions 
6  promulgate  themselves,  and  all  extant  Powers  bear  rule. 
'  The  strong  thing  is  the  just  thing  :  this  thou  wilt  find 
4  throughout  in  our  world  ; — as  indeed  was  God  and  Truth 
4  the  Maker  of  our  world,  or  was  Satan  and  Falsehood  ? 

4  One  proposition  widely  current  as  to  this  Norman  Con- 
4  quest  is  of  a  Physiologic  sort :  That  the  conquerors  and  con- 
'  quered  here  were  of  different  races  ;  nay  that  the  Nobility 
4  of  England  is  still,  to  this  hour,  of  a  somewhat  different 
4  blood  from  the  commonalty,  their  fine  Norman  features  con- 
4  trasting  so  pleasantly  with  the  coarse  Saxon  ones  of  the 
4  others.  God  knows,  there  are  coarse  enough  features  to  be 
'  seen  among  the  commonalty  of  that  country  ;  but  if  the  No- 
6  bility's  be  finer,  it  is  not  their  Normanhood  that  can  be  the 
£  reason.    Does  the  above  Physiologist  reflect  who  those  same 


58 


CHARTISM. 


'  Normans,  Northmen,  originally  were  ?  Baltic  Saxons,  and 
£  what  other  miscellany  of  Lurdanes,  Jutes  and  Deutsch  Pi- 
*  rates  from  the  East-sea  marshes  would  join  them  in  plunder 
'  of  France  !  If  living  three  centuries  longer  in  Heathenism, 
'  sea-robbery,  and  the  unlucrative  fishing  of  ambergris  could 
'  ennoble  them  beyond  the  others,  then  were  they  ennobled. 
6  The  Normans  were  Saxons  who  had  learned  to  speak  French. 
Q  No  :  by  Thor  and  Wodan,  the  Saxons  were  all  as  noble  as 
c  was  needful  ; — shaped,  says  the  My  thus,  "  from  the  rock  of 
£  the  Harzgebirge  ;  "  brother-tribes  being  made  of  clay,  wood, 
£  water,  or  what  other  material  might  be  going  !  A  stubborn, 
1  taciturn,  sulky,  indomitable  rock-made  race  of  men  ;  as  the 
£  figure  they  cut  in  all  quarters,  in  the  cane-brake  of  Arkansas, 
£  in  the  Ghauts  of  the  Himmalayha,  no  less  than  in  London 
£  City,  in  Warwick  or  Lancaster  County,  does  still  abun- 
6  dantly  manifest/ 


£  To  this  English  People  in  World -History,  there  have 
'been,  shall  I  prophesy,  Two  grand  tasks  assigned?  Huge- 
£  looming  through  the  dim  tumult  of  the  always  incommen- 
£  surable  Present  Time,  outlines  of  two  tasks  disclose  them- 
£  selves  :  the  grand  Industrial  task  of  conquering  some  half 
'  or  more  of  this  Terraqueous  Planet  for  the  use  of  man  ;  then 
*  secondly,  the  grand  Constitutional  task  of  sharing,  in  some 
£  pacific  endurable  manner,  the  fruit  of  said  conquest,  and 
£  showing  all  people  how  it  might  be  done.  These  I  will  call 
£  their  two  tasks,  discernible  hitherto  in  World-History  :  in 
£  both  of  these  they  have  made  respectable  though  unequal 
'  progress.  Steamengines,  ploughshares,  pickaxes  ;  what  is 
£  meant  by  conquering  this  Planet,  they  partly  know.  Elec- 
( tive  franchise,  ballot-box,  representative  assembly  ;  how  to 
£  accomplish  sharing  of  that  conquest,  they  do  not  so  well 
£  know.  Europe  knows  not ;  Europe  vehemently  asks  in  these 
'  days,  but  receives  no  answer,  no  credible  answer.  For  as  to 
£  the  partial  Delolmish,  Benthamee,  or  other  French  or  Eng- 
£lish  answers,  current  in  the  proper  quarters  and  highly 


NEW  ERAS.  59 

;  beneficial  and  indispensable  there,  thy  disbelief  in  them  as 
5  final  answers,  I  take  it,  is  complete.' 


'  Succession  of  rebellions  ?  Successive  clippings  away  of 
'  the  Supreme  Authority  ;  class  after  class  rising  in  revolt  to 
'  say,  "We  will  no  more  be  governed  so"?  That  is  not  the 
' history  of  the  English  Constitution  ;  not  altogether  that 
'  Rebellion  is  the  means,  but  it  is  not  the  motive  cause.  The 
'  motive  cause,  and  true  secret  of  the  matter,  were  always 
'  this  :  The  necessity  there  was  for  rebelling  ? 

( Eights  I  will  permit  thee  to  call  everywhere  correctly-arti- 
'  calated  mights.  A  dreadful  business  to  articulate  correctly  ! 
£  Consider  those  Barons  of  Runnymead  ;  consider  all  manner 
'  of  successfully  revolting  men  !  Your  Great  Charter  has  to 
■  be  experimented  on,  by  battle  and  debate,  for  a  hundred- 
( and-fifty  years  ;  is  then  found  to  be  correct ;  and  stands  as 
'  true  Magna  Charta, — nigh  cut  in  pieces  by  a  tailor,  short  of 
'  measures,  in  later  generations.  Mights,  I  say,  are  a  dread- 
'  f ul  business  to  articulate  correctly !    Yet  articulated  they 

*  have  to  be  ;  the  time  comes  for  it,  the  need  comes  for  it,  and 
'  with  enormous  difficulty  and  experimenting  it  is  got  done. 
6  Call  it  not  succession  of  rebellions  ;  call  it  rather  succession 
'  of  expansions,  of  enlightenments,  gift  of  articulate  utterance 
'  descending  ever  lowrer.    Class  after  class  acquires  faculty  of 

*  utterance, — Necessity  teaching  and  compelling ;  as  the  dumb 
'  youth  seeing  the  knife  at  his  father's  throat,  suddenly  ac- 
'  quired  speech  !  Consider  too  how  class  after  class  not  only 
6  acquires  faculty  of  articulating  what  its  might  is,  but  like- 
'  wise  grows  in  might,  acquires  might  or  loses  might ;  so  that 
'  always,  after  a  space,  there  is  not  only  new  gift  of  articulat- 
'  ing,  but  there  is  something  new  to  articulate.  Constitu- 
'  tiohal  epochs  will  never  cease  among  men.' 


£  And  so  now,  the  Barons  all  settled  and  satisfied,  a  new 
6  class  hitherto  silent  had  begun  to  speak  ;  the  Middle  Class, 


66 


CHARTISM. 


6  namely.  In  the  time  of  James  First,  not  only  Knights  of  the 
'  Shire  but  Parliamentary  Burgesses  assemble,  to  assert,  to 
1  complain  and  propose  ;  a  real  House  of  Commons  has  come 
'  decisively  into  play, — much  to  the  astonishment  of  James 

*  First.  We  call  it  a  growth  of  mights,  if  also  of  necessities  ; 
6  a  growth  of  power  to  articulate  mights,  and  make  rights  of 
6  them. 

'  In  those  past  silent  centuries,  among  those  silent  classes, 
i  much  had  been  going  on.  Not  only  had  red-deer  in  the  New 
and  other  Forests  been  got  preserved  and  shot  ;  and  treach- 
'  eries  of  Simon  de  Montfort,  wars  of  Red  and  "White  Roses, 
'  Battles  of  Crecy,  Battles  of  Bosworth  and  many  other  battles 
'  been  got  transacted  and  adjusted  ;  but  England  wholly,  not 
'  without  sore  toil  and  aching  bones  to  the  millions  of  sires 

*  and  the  millions  of  sons  these  eighteen  generations,  had  been 
'  got  drained  and  tilled,  covered  with  yellow  harvests,  beauti- 
'  ful  and  rich  possessions  ;  the  mud  wooden  Caesters  and 
'  Chesters  had  become  steepled  tile-roofed  compact  Towns. 
'  Sheffield  had  taken  to  the  manufacture  of  Sheffield  whittles  ; 

'  Worstead  could  from  wool  spin  yarn,  and  knit  or  weave  the  \ 
'  same  into  stockings  or  breeches  for  men.    England  had 
'  property  valuable  to  the  auctioneer  ;  but  the  accumulated 
'  manufacturing,  commercial,  economic  skill  which  lay  impal- 
'  pably  warehoused  in  English  hands  and  heads,  what  auction- 

*  eer  could  estimate  ! 

'  Hardly  an  Englishman  to  be  met  with  but  could  do  some- 
'  thing  ;  some  cunninger  thing  than  break  his  fellow-creature's 
'  head  with  battle-axes.  The  seven  incorporated  trades,  with 
'  their  million  guild-brethren,  with  their  hammers,  their  shut- 
6  ties  and  tools,  what  an  army  ; — fit  to  conquer  that  land  of 
c  England,  as  we  say,  and  to  hold  it  conquered  !  Nay,  strangest 
1  of  all,  the  English  people  had  acquired  the  faculty  and  habit 
■  of  thinking, — even  of  believing;  individual  conscience  -had 
'  unfolded  itself  among  them  ;  Conscience,  and  Intelligence  its 
'  handmaid.  Ideas  of  innumerable  kinds  were  circulating 
'  among  these  men  :  witness  one  Shakspeare,  a  woolcomber, 
'  poacher,  or  whatever  else  at  Stratford  in  Warwickshire,  who 
'  happened  to  write  books  !    The  finest  human  figure,  as  I  ap- 


NEW  ERAS. 


61 


'  prehend,  that  Nature  has  hitherto  seen  fit  to  make  of  our 
'  widely  diffused  Teutonic  clay.  Saxon,  Norman,  Celt  or  Sar- 
'  mat,  I  find  no  human  soul  so  beautiful,  these  fifteen  hundred 
6  known  years  ; — our  supreme  modern  European  man.  Him 
'  England  had  contrived  to  realize  ;  were  there  not  ideas? 

'  Ideas  poetic  and  also  Puritanic, — that  had  to  seek  utter- 
f  ance  in  the  notablest  way  !  England  had  got  her  Shakspeare  ; 
'  but  was  now  about  to  get  her  Milton  and  Oliver  Cromwell. 
'  This  too  we  will  call  a  new  expansion,  hard  as  it  might  be  to 
'  articulate  and  adjust ;  this,  that  a  man  could  actually  have 
'  a  Conscience  for  his  own  behoof,  and  not  for  his  Priest's 
1  only  ;  that  his  Priest,  be  who  he  might,  would  henceforth 
c  have  to  take  that  fact  along  with  him.  One  of  the  hardest 
'  things  to  adjust !  It  is  not  adjusted  down  to  this  hour.  It 
'  lasts  onwards  to  the  time  they  call  "  Glorious  Revolution" 
'  before  so  much  as  a  reasonable  truce  can  be  made,  and  the 
'  war  proceed  by  logic  mainly.  And  still  it  is  war,  and  no 
(  peace,  unless  we  call  waste  vacancy  peace.  But  it  needed 
(  to  be  adjusted,  as  the  others  had  done,  as  still  others  wTiil 
■  do.  Nobility  at  Runny  mead  cannot  endure  foul  play  grown 
'  palpable  ;  no  more  can  Gentry  in  Long  Parliament  ;  no  more 
6  can  Commonalty  in  Parliament  they  name  Reformed. 
1  Prynne's  bloody  ears  were  as  a  testimony  and  question  to  all 
*  England  :  "Englishmen,  is  this  fair?"  England,  no  longer 
'  continent  of  herself,  answered,  bellowing  as  with  the  voice 
'  of  lions  :  "  No,  it  is  not  fair  !  "  ' 


6  But  now  on  the  Industrial  side,  while  this  great  Constitu- 
1  tional  controversy,  and  revolt  of  the  Middle  Class  had  not 
'  ended,  had  yet  but  begun,  what  a  shoot  was  that  that  Eng- 
'  land,  carelessly,  in  quest  of  other  objects,  struck  out  across 
'  the  Ocean,  into  the  waste  land  which  it  named  New  England ! 
'  Hail  to  thee,  poor  little  ship  Mayflower,  of  Delft-Haven; 
'  poor  common-looking  ship,  hired  by  common  charter  party 
1  for  coined  dollars  ;  caulked  with  mere  oakum  and  tar  ; — pro- 
'  visioned  with  vulgarest  biscuit  and  bacon  ; — yet  what  ship 


i>2  CHARTISM. 

'  Argo,  or  miraculous  epic  ship  built  by  the  Sea-gods,  was 
'  other  than  a  foolish  bumbarge  in  comparison  !  Golden 
'  fleeces  or  the-  like  these  sailed  for,  with  or  without  effect ; 
'  thou  little  Mayflower  hadst  in  thee  a  veritable  Promethean 

*  spark  ;  the  life-spark  of  the  largest  Nation  on  our  Earth, — so 
(  we  may  already  name  the  Transatlantic  Saxon  Nation.  They 
'  went  seeking  leave  to  hear  sermon  in  their  own  method,  these 
6  Mayflower  Puritans ;  a  most  honest  indispensable  search  : 
c  and  yet,  like  Saul  the  son  of  Kish,  seeking  a  small  thing,  they 
'  found  this  unexpected  great  thing!    Honour  to  the  brave 

*  and  true  ;  they  verily,  we  say,  carry  fire  from  Heaven,  and 
'  have  a  power  which  themselves  dream  not  of.  Let  all  men 
4  honour  Puritanism,  since  God  has  so  honoured  it.  Islam 
'  itself,  with  its  wild  heartfelt  "  Allah  alchar,  God  is  great,"  was 
'  it  not  honoured  ?    There  is  but  one  thing  without  honour  ; 

*  smitten  with  eternal  barrenness  and  inability  to  do  or  be  : 
c  Insincerity,  Unbelief.  He  who  believes  no  thing,  who  be- 
1  lieves  only  the  shows  of  things,  is  not  in  relation  with  Nature 
'  and  Fact  at  all.  Nature  denies  him  ;  orders  him  at  hisearli- 
'  est  convenience  to  disappear.    Let  him  disappear  from  her 

*  domains, — into  those  of  Chaos,  Hypothesis  and  Simulacrum, 
\  or  wherever  else  his  parish  may  be.' 


4  As  to  the  third  Constitutional  controversy,  that  of  the 
'  Working  Classes,  which  now  debates  itself  everywhere  these 
'  fifty  years,  in  France  specifically  since  1789,  in  Ed  gland  too 
'  since  1831,  it  is  doubtless  the  hardest  of  all  to  get  articu- 

*  lated  ;  finis  of  peace,  or  even  reasonable  truce  on  this,  is  a 

*  thing  I  have  little  prospect  of  for  several  generations.  Dark, 

*  wild-weltering,  dreary,  boundless  ;  nothing  heard  on  it  yet 
'  but  ballot-boxes,  Parliamentary  arguing  ;  not  to  speak  of 

*  much  far  worse  arguing,  by  steel  and  lead,  from  Valmy  to 

*  Waterloo,  to  Peterloo  !  * 

'  And  yet  of  Representative  Assemblies  may  not  this  good 
'  be  said  :  That  contending  parties  in  a  country  do  thereby 
'  ascertain  one  another's  strength  ?    They  fight  there,  since 


NEW  ERAS. 


c  fight  they  must,  by  petition,  Parliamentary  eloquence,  not 
"  by  sword,  bayonet  and  bursts  of  military  cannon.  Why  do 
6  men  fight  at  all,  if  it  be  not  that  they  are  yet  unacquainted 
'  with  one  another's  strength,  and  must  fight  and  ascertain 
c  it  ?  Knowing  that  thou  art  stronger  than  I,  that  thou  canst 
'  compel  me,  I  will  submit  to  thee  :  unless  I  chance  to  pre- 
'  fer  extermination,  and  slightly  circuitous  suicide,  there  is  no 
'  other  course  for  me.    That  in  England,  by  public  meetings, 

*  by  petitions,  by  elections,  leading-articles,  and  other  jang- 
6  ling  hubbub  and  tongue-fence  which  perpetually  goes  on 
'  everywhere  in  that  country,  people  ascertain  one  another's 
(  strength,  and  the  most  obdurate  House  of  Lords  has  to 
'  yield  and  give  in  before  it  come  to  cannonading  and  guil- 
'  lotinement ;  this  is  a  saving  characteristic  of  England.  Nay, 
'  at  bottom,  is  not  this  the  celebrated  English  Constitution 
c  itself?  This  unspoken  Constitution,  whereof  Privilege  of 
'  Parliament,  Money-Bill,  Mutiny-Bill,  and  all  that  could  be 
£  spoken  and  enacted  hitherto,  is  not  the  essence  and  body, 

*  but  only  the  shape  and  skin?  Such  Constitution  is,  in  our 
'  times,  verily  invaluable.' 


'  Long  stormy  spring-time,  wet  contentious  April,  winter 
'  chilling  the  lap  of  very  May  ;  but  at  length  the  season  of 
1  summer  does  come.  So  long  the  tree  stood  naked  ;  angry 
4  wiry  naked  boughs  moaning  and  creaking  in  the  wind  :  you 
4  would  say,  Cut  it  down,  why  cumbereth  it  the  ground  ? 
'  Not  so  ;  we  must  wait ;  all  things  will  have  their  time. — Of 

*  the  man  Shakspeare,  and  his  Elizabethan  Era,  with  its 
4  Sydneys,  Kaleighs,  Bacons,  wThat  could  wTe  say  ? — That  it  was 
6  a  spiritual  flower-time.    Suddenly,  as  with  the  breath  of 

*  June,  your  rude  naked  tree  is  touched  ;  bursts  into  leaves 

*  and  flowers,  such  leaves  and  flowers.  The  past  long  ages  of 
4  nakedness,  and  wintny  fermentation  and  elaboration,  have 
4  done  their  part,  though  seeming  to  do  nothing.    The  past 

*  silence  has  got  a  voice,  all  the  more  significant  the  longer  it 
4  had  continued  silent.    In  trees,  men,  institutions,  creeds, 


64 


CHARTISM. 


'  nations,  in  all  things  extant  and  growing  m  this  universe, 
'  we  may  note  such  vicissitudes,  and  budding-times.  More- 
4  over  there  are  spiritual  budding-times  ;  and  then  also  there 

*  are  physical  appointed  to  nations. 

4  Thus  in  the  middle  of  that  poor  calumniated  Eighteenth 
4  Century,  see  once  more  !'  Long  winter  again  past,  the  cleacl- 
'  seeming  tree  proves  to  be  living,  to  have  been  always  living, 
'  after  motionless  times,  every  bough  shoots  forth  on  the  sud- 
4  den,  very  strangely  : — it  now  turns  out  that  this  favoured 
'  England  was  not  only  to  have  had  her  Shakspeares,  Bacons, 
4  Sydneys,  but  to  have  her  Watts,  Arkwrights,  Brindleys  !  We 
-  will  honour  greatness  in  all  kinds.  The  Prospero  evoked 
4  the  singing  of  Ariel,  and  took  captive  the  w^orld  with  those 
'  melodies :  the  same  Prospero  can  send  his  Fire-demons 
4  panting  across  all  oceans ;  shooting  with  the  speed  of  me- 
'  teors,  on  cunning  highways,  from  end  to  end  of  kingdoms  ; 
4  and  make  Iron  his  missionary,  preaching  Us  evangel  to  the 

*  brute  Primeval  Powers,  which  listen  and  obey  :  neither  is 
4 this  small.  Manchester;\with  its  cotton-fuz,  its  smoke  and 
4  dust,  its  tumult  and  contentious  squalor,  is  hideous  to  thee  ? 
4  Think  not  so :  a  precious  substance,  beautiful  as  magic 
4  dreams,  and  yet  no  dream  but  a  reality,  lies  hidden  in  that 
4  noisome  w7rappage  ; — a  wrappage  struggling  indeed  (look  at 
4  Chartisms  and  such  like)  to  cast  itself  off,  and  leave  the 
4  beauty  free  and  visible  there  !  Hast  thou  heard,  with  sound 
4  ears,  the  awakening  of  a  Manchester,  on  Monday  morning,  at 
4  half  past  five  by  the  clock  ;  the  rushing  off  of  its  thousand 
4  mills,  like  the  broom  of  an  Atlantic  tide,  ten  thousand  times 
4  ten  thousand  spools  and  spindles  all  set  humming  there, — it 
4  is  perhaps,  if  thou  knew  it  well,  sublime  as  a  Niagara,  or 
4  more  so.  Cotton-spinning  is  the  clothing  of  the  naked  in 
4 its  result ;  the  triumph  of  man  over  matter  in  its  means. 
£  Soot  and  despair  are  not  the  essence  of  it ;  they  are  divisible 
'from  it, — at  this  hour,  are  they  not  crying  fiercely  to  be 
4  divided  ?    The  great  Goethe,  looking  at  cotton  Switzerland, 

*  declared  it,  I  am  told,  to  be  of  all  things  that  he  had  seen  in 
4  this  world  the  most  poetical.  Whereat  friend  Kanzler  von 
'  Midler,  in  search  of  the  palpable  picturesque,  could  not  but 


NEW  EE  AS. 


65 


€  stare  wide-eyed.  Nevertheless  our  World-Poet  knew  well 
"what  he  was  saying.' 

'Richard  Arkwright,  it  would  seem,  was  not  a  beautiful 

*  man  ;  no  romance-hero  with  haughty  eyes,  Apollo -lip,  and 
1  gesture  like  the  herald  Mercury  ;  a  plain  almost  gross,  bag- 
'  cheeked,  potbellied  Lancashire  man,  with  an  air  of  painful 
'  reflection,  yet  also  of  copious  free  digestion  ; — a  man  sta- 

*  tioned  by  the  community  to  shave  certain  dusty  beards,  in  the 
'  Northern  parts  of  England,  at  a  half-penny  each.  To  such 
■  end,  we  say,  by  forethought,  oversight,  accident  and  arrange- 
'  ment,  had  Richard  Arkwright  been,  by  the  community  of 
£  England  and  his  own  consent,  set  apart.  Nevertheless,  in 
'  strapping  of  razors,  in  lathering  of  dusty  beards,  and  the 
'  contradictions  and  confusions  attendant  thereon,  the  man 
i  had  notions  in  that  rough  head  of  his  ;  spindles,  shuttles, 
'  wheels  and  contrivances  plying  ideally  within  the  same  ; 
'  rather  hopeless-looking  ;  which,  however,  he  did  at  last  bring 
6  to  bear.  Not  without  difficulty.  His  townsfolk  rose  in  mob 
'  round  him,  for  threatening  to  shorten  labour,  to  shorten 
'  wages  ;  so  that  he  had  to  fly,  with  broken  washpots,  scat- 
'  tered  household,  and  seek  refuge  elsewhere.  Nay  his  wife 
'  too,  as  I  learn,  rebelled  ;  burnt  his  wooden  model  of  his 
'  spinning  wheel ;  resolute  that  he  should  stick  to  his  razors 

*  rather :  for  which,  however,  he  decisively,  as  thou  wilt  rejoice 
'  to  understand,  packed  her  out  of  doors.  O  reader,  what  a 
'  Historical  Phenomenon  is  that  bag-cheeked,  potbellied,  much 
1  enduring,  much-inventing  man  and  barber  ?  French  Revo- 
' lutions  were  a  brewing  :  to  resist  the  same  in  any  measure, 
£  imperial  Kaisers  were  impotent  without  the  cotton  and  cloth 
4  of  England  :  and  it  was  this  man  that  had  to  give  England 
'  the  power  of  cotton/ 

6  Neither  had  Watt  of  the  Steamengine  a  heroic  origin,  any 
1  kindred  with  the  princes  of  this  world.  The  princes  of  this 
'  world  were  shooting  their  partridges  ;  noisily,  in  Parliament 
'  or  elsewhere,  solving  the  question,  Head  or  tail  ?  while  this 
s  man,  with  blackened  fingers,  with  grim  brow,  was  searching 
6  out,  in  his  workshop,  the  Fire-secret ;  or,  having  found  it, 
4  was  painfully  wending  to  and  fro  in  quest  of  a  "monied 
5 


66 


CHARTISM, 


£  man  "  as  indispensable  man-midwife  of  the  same.  Header, 
'  thou  shalt  admire  what  is  admirable,  not  what  is  dressed  in 
'  admirable.  Thou  shalt  learn  to  know  the  British  lion  even 
'  when  he  is  not  throne-supporter,  and  also  the  British  jack- 
£  ass  in  lion's  skin  even  when  he  is.  Ah,  couldst  thou  always, 
£  what  a  world  were  it !  But  has  the  Berlin  Royal  Academy 
'  or  any  English  Useful-Knowledge  Society  discovered,  for  in- 
'  stance,  who  it  was  that  first  scratched  earth  with  a  stick  ;  and 
'  threw  corns,  the  biggest  he  could  find,  into  it ;  seedgrains  of 
'  a  certain  grass,  which  he  named  white  or  wheat  f  Again,  what 
£  is  the  whole  Tees-water  and  other  breeding  world  to  him  who 
'  stole  home  from  the  forests  the  first  bison-calf,  and  bred  it 
£  up  to  be  a  tame  bison,  a  milk-cow  ?  No  machine  of  all  they 
£  showed  me  in  Birmingham  can  be  put  in  comparison  for  in- 
'  genuity  with  that  figure  of  the  wedge  named  knife,  of  the 
£  wedges  named  saw,  of  the  lever  named  hammer: — nay  is  it 
c  not  with  the  hammer-knife,  named  sword,  that  men  fight,  and 
£  maintain  any  semblance  of  constituted  authority  that  yet 
'  survives  among  us  ?  The  steamengine  I  call  fire-demon  and 
£  great ;  but  it  is  nothing  to  the  invention  of  fire.  Prome- 
£ theus,  Tubal- cain,  Triptolemus  !  Are  not  our  greatest  men 
£  as  good  as  lost?  The  men  that  walk  daily  among  us,  cloth- 
*  ing  us,  warming  us,  feeding  us,  walk  shrouded  in  darkness, 
£  mere  mythic  men. 

£  It  is  said,  ideas  produce  revolutions  :  and  truly  so  they  do  ; 
£  not  spiritual  ideas  only,  but  even  mechanical.  In  this  clang- 
£ing  clashing  universal  Sword-dance  which  the  European 
£  world  now  dances  for  the  last  half-century,  Voltaire  is  but 
'  one  choragus,  where  Richard  Arkwright  is  another.  Let  it 
£  dance  itself  out.  When  Arkwright  shall  have  become 
£  mythic  like  Arachne,  w^e  shall  spin  in  peaceable  profit  by 
£  him  ;  and  the  Sword-dance,  with  all  its  sorrowful  shufflings, 
£  Waterloo  wTaltzes,  Moscow  gallopades,  how  forgotten  will 
'that  be  V 


£  On  the  whole,  were  not  all  these  things  most  unexpected, 
\  unforeseen  ?  As  indeed  what  thing  is  foreseen  ;  especially 
'  what  man,  the  parent  of  things  !    Robert  Clive  in  that  same 


NEW  ERAS.  67 

'time  went  out,  with  a  developed  gift  of  penmanship,  as 
'  writer  or  superior  book-keeper  to  a  Trading*  Factory  estab- 
6  lished  in  the  distant  East.  With  gift  of  penmanship  devel- 
£  oped  ;  with  other  gifts  not  yet  developed,  which  the  calls  of 
£  the  case  did  by  and  by  develope.  Not  fit  for  book-keeping 
c  alone,  the  man  was  found  fit  for  conquering  Nawaubs,  found- 
£  ing  kingdoms,  Indian  Empires  !  In  a  questionable  manner, 
£  Indian  Empire  from  the  other  hemisphere  took  up  its  abode 
£  in  Leadenhall  Street,  in  the  City  of  London. 

6  Accidental  all  these  things  and  persons  look,  unexpected 
'every  one  of  them  to  man.  Yet  inevitable  every  one  of 
£  them  ;  foreseen,  not  unexpected,  by  Supreme  Power ;  pre- 
pared, appointed  from  afar.  Advancing  always  through  all 
1  centuries,  •  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  they  arrimd. 
6  The  Saxon  kindred  burst  forth  into  cotton-spinning,  cloth- 
£  cropping,  iron-forging,  steam-engining,  railwaying,  commerc- 
£  ing  and  careering  towards  all  the  winds  of  Heaven, — in  this 
'  inexplicable  noisy  manner  ;  the  noise  of  which,  in  Power- 
1  mills,  in  progress-of-the-species  Magazines,  still  deafens  us 
£  somewhat.  Most  noisy,  sudden  !  The  Staffordshire  coal- 
c  stratum  and  coal-strata,  lay  side  by  side  with  iron-strata, 
*  quiet  since  the  creation  of  the  world  !  Water  flowed  in 
£  Lancashire  and  Lanarkshire  ;  bituminous  fire  lay  bedded  in 
£  rocks  there  too, — over  which  how  many  fighting  Stanleys, 
£  black  Douglases,  and  other  the  like  contentious  persons,  had 
£  fought  out  their  bickerings  and  broils,  not  without  result, 
'  we  will  hope  !  But  God  said,  Let  the  iron  missionaries  be  ; 
cand  they  were.  Coal  and  iron,  so  long  close  unregardful 
'  neighbours,  are  wedded  together  ;  Birmingham  and  Wol- 
'  verhampton,  and  the  hundred  Stygian  forges,  with  their  fire- 
£  throats  and  never-resting  sledge-hammers,  rose  into  day. 
£  Wet  Mancunium  stretched  out  her  hand  towards  Carolina 
'  and  the  torrid  zone,  and  plucked  cotton  there  :  who  could 
£  forbid  her,  her  that  had  the  skill  to  weave  it  ?  Fish  fled 
£  thereupon  from  the  Mersey  River,  vexed  with  innumerable 
£  keels.  England,  I  say,  dug  out  her  bitumen-fire,  and  bade 
£  it  work  :  towns  rose,  and  steeple-chimneys  ; — Chartisms 
6  also,  and  Parliaments  they  name  Reformed.' 


68 


CHARTISM. 


Such,  figuratively  given,  are  some  prominent  points,  chief 
mountain-summits,  of  our  English  history  past  and  present, 
according  to  the  Author  of  this  strange  untranslated  Work, 
whom  we  think  we  recognise  to  be  an  old  acquaintance. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

PARLIAMENTARY  RADICALISM. 

To  us  looking  at  these  matters  somewhat  in  the  same  light, 
Reform-Bills,  French  Revolutions,  Louis-Philippes,  Chartisms, 
Revolts  of  Three  Days,  and  what  not,  are  no  longer  inexpli- 
cable. Where  the  great  mass  of  men  is  tolerably  right,  all  is 
right  ;  where  they  are  not  right,  all  is  wrong.  The  speaking- 
classes  speak  and  debate,  each  for  itself  ;  the  great  dumb, 
deep-buried  class  lies  like  an  Enceladus,  who  in  his  pain,  if  he 
will  complain  of  it,  has  to  produce  earthquakes  !  Everywhere, 
in  these  countries,  in  these  times,  the  central  fact  worthy  of  all 
consideration  forces  itself  on  us  in  this  shape  :  the  claim  of 
the  Free  Working  man  to  be  raised  to  a  level,  we  may  say, 
with  the  Working  Slave,  his  anger  and  cureless  discontent 
till  that  be  done.  Food,  shelter,  due  guidance,  in  return  for 
his  labour  :  candidly  interpreted,  Chartism  and  all  such  isms 
mean  that ;  and  the  madder  they  are,  do  they  not  the  more 
emphatically  mean,  "  See  what  guidance  you  have  given  us  ! 
What  delirium  we  are  brought  to  talk  and  project,  guided  by 
nobody  !  "  Laissez-faire  on  the  part  of  the  Governing  Classes, 
we  repeat  again  and  again,  will,  with  whatever  difficulty,  have 
to  cease  ;  pacific  mutual  division  of  the  spoil,  and  a  world 
well  let  alone,  will  no  longer  suffice.  A  Do-nothing  Guid- 
ance ;  and  it  is  a  Do-something  World  !  Would  to  God  our 
Ducal  Duces  would  become  leaders  indeed  ;  our  Aristocracies 
and  Priesthoods  discover  in  some  suitable  degree  what  the 
world  expected  of  them,  what  the  world  could  no  longer  do 
without  getting  of  them  !  Nameless  unmeasured  confusions, 
misery  to  themselves  and  us,  might  so  be  spared.  But  that 
too  will  be  as  God  has  appointed.  If  they  learn,  it  will  be 
well  and  happy  :  if  not  they,  then  others  instead  of  them  will 


PARLIAMENTARY  RADIO  A  LTSM. 


69 


and  must,  and  once  more,  though  after  a  long  sad  circuit,  it 
will  be  well  and  happy. 

Neither  is  the  history  of  Chartism  mysterious  in  these 
times  ;  especially  if  that  of  Radicalism  be  looked  at.  All 
along  for  the  last  five-and-twenty  years,  it  was  curious  to 
note  how  the  internal  discontent  of  England  struggled  to  find 
vent  for  itself  through  any  orifice  ?:  the  poor  patient  all  sick 
from  centre  to  surface,  complains  now  of  this  member,  now  of 
that  ; — corn-laws,  currency -laws,  free-trade,  protection,  want 
of  free-trade  :  the  poor  patient  tossing  from  side  to  side, 
seeking  a  sound  side  to  lie  on,  finds  none.  This  Doctor  says, 
it  is  the  liver ;  that  other,  it  is  the  lungs,  the  head,  the  heart, 
defective  transpiration  in  the  skin.  A  thorough-going  Doctor 
of  eminence  said,  it  was  rotten  boroughs  ;  the  want  of  ex- 
tended suffrage  to  destroy  rotten  boroughs.  From  of  old 
the  English  patient  himself  had  a  continually  recurring 
notion  that  this  was  it.  The  English  people  are  used  to  suf- 
frage ;  it  is  their  panacea  for  all  that  goes  wrong  with  them  ; 
they  have  a  fixed-idea  of  suffrage.  Singular  enough  ;  one's 
right  to  vote  for  a  Member  of  Parliament,  to  send  one's 
*  twenty  thousandth  part  of  a  master  of  tongue-fence  to 
National  Palaver,' — the  Doctors  asserted  that  this  was  Free- 
dom, this  and  no  other.  It  seemed  credible  to  many  men, 
of  high  degree  and  of  low.  The  persuasion  of  remedy  grew, 
the  evil  was  pressing  ;  Swing's  ricks  were  on  fire.  Some  nine 
years  ago,  a  State-surgeon  rose,  and  in  peculiar  circumstances 
said  :  Let  there  be  extension  of  the  suffrage  ;  let  the  great 
Doctor's  nostrum,  the  patient's  old  passionate  prayer  be 
fulfilled! 

Parliamentary  Radicalism,  while  it  gave  articulate  utterance 
to  the  discontent  of  the  English  people,  could  not  by  its 
worst  enemy  be  said  to  be  without  a  function.  If  it  is  in  the 
natural  order  of  things  that  there  must  be  discontent,  no  less 
so  is  it  that  such  discontent  should  have  an  outlet,  a  Parlia- 
mentary voice.  Here  the  matter  is  debated  of,  demonstrated, 
contradicted,  qualified,  reduced  to  feasibility  ; — can  at  least 
solace  itself  with  hope,  and  die  gently,  convicted  of  wifeasi- 
bility.    The  New,  Untried  ascertains  how  it  will  fit  itself  into 


70 


CHARTISM 


the  arrangements  of  the  Old ;  whether  the  Old  can  be  com' 
pelled  to  admit  it ;  how  in  that  case  it  may,  with  the  minimum 
of  violence,  be  admitted.  Nor  let  us  count  it  an  easy  one, 
this  function  of  Radicalism  ;  it  was  one  of  the  most  difficult. 
The  pain-stricken  patient  does,  indeed,  without  effort  groan 
and  complain  ;  but  not  without  effort  does  the  physician  as- 
certain what  it  is  that  has  gone  wrong  with  him,  how  some 
remedy  may  be  devised  for  him.  And  above  all,  if  your  pa- 
tient is  not  one  sick  man,  but  a  whole  sick  nation  !  Dingy 
dumb  millions,  grimed  with  dust  and  sweat,  with  darkness, 
rage  and  sorrow,  stood  round  these  men,  saying,  or  struggling 
as  they  could  to  say  :  "  Behold,  our  lot  is  unfair  ;  our  life  is 
not  whole  but  sick  :  we  cannot  live  under  in  justice  ;  go  ye  and 
get  us  justice  !  "  For  whether  the  poor  operative  clamoured 
for  Time-bill,  Factory-bill,  Corn-bill,  for  or  against  whatever 
bill,  this  was  what  he  meant.  All  bills  plausibly  presented 
might  have  some  look  of  hope  in  them,  might  get  some 
clamour  of  approval  from  him  ;  as,  for  the  man  wholly  sick, 
there  is  no  disease  in  the  Nosology  but  he  can  trace  in  him- 
self some  symptoms  of  it.  Such  was  the  mission  of  Parlia- 
mentary Radicalism. 

How  Parliamentary  Radicalism  has  fulfilled  this  mission, 
entrusted  to  its  management  these  eight  years  now,  is  known 
to  all  men.  The  expectant  millions  have  sat  at  a  feast  of  the 
Barmecide  ;  been  bidden  fill  themselves  with  imagination  of 
meat.  What  thing  has  Radicalism  obtained  for  them  ;  what 
other  than  shadows  of  things  has  it  so  much  as  asked  for 
them  ?  Cheap  Justice,  Justice  to  Ireland,  Irish  Appropriation- 
Clause,  Rate-paying  Clause,  Poor-Rate,  Church-Rate,  House- 
hold Suffrage,  Ballot-Question  '  open '  or  shut :  not  things  but 
shadows  of  things  ;  Benthamee  formulas ;  barren  as  the  east- 
wind !  An  Ultra-radical,  not  seemingly  of  the  Benthamee 
species,  is  forced  to  exclaim  :  6  The  people  are  at  last  wearied. 
'  They  say,  Why  should  we  be  ruined  in  our  shops,  thrown 
'  out  of  our  farms,  voting  for  these  men  ?  Ministerial  major- 
'  itjes  decline  ;  this  Ministry  has  become  impotent,  had  it 
'  even  the  will  to  do  good.  They  have  called  long  to  us, 
6  "  We  are  a  Reform  Ministry  ;  will  ye  not  support  us?  "  We 


PARLIAMENT AR  Y  RADICALISM. 


71 


*  have  supported  them  ;  borne  them  forward  indignantly  on 
'  our  shoulders,  time  after  time,  fall  after  fall,  when  they  had 
'  been  hurled  out  into  the  street  ;  and  lay  prostrate,  helpless, 
'  like  dead  luggage.  It  is  the  fact  of  a  Keform  Ministry,  not 
'  the  name  of  one  that  we  would  support !  Languor,  sickness 
'  of  hope  deferred  pervades  the  public  mind  ;  the  public 
'  mind  says  at  last,  Why  all  this  struggle  for  the  name  of  a 
'  Reform  Ministry  ?    Let  the  Tories  be  Ministry  if  they  will  ; 

*  let  at  least  some  living  reality  be  Ministry  !  A  rearing  horse 
6  that  will  only  run  backward,  he  is  not  the  horse  one  would 
1  choose  to  travel  on  :  yet  of  all  conceivable  horses  the  worst 

*  is  the  dead  horse.  Mounted  on  a  rearing  horse,  you  may 
i  back  him,  spur  him,  check  him,  make  a  little  way  even  back- 
'  wards ;  but  seated  astride  of  your  dead  horse,  what  chance 
'  is  there  for  you  in  the  chapter  of  possibilities  ?  You  sit 
'  motionless,  hopeless,  a  spectacle  to  gods  and  men.' 

There  is  a  class  of  revolutionists  named  Oirondins,  whose 
fate  in  history  is  remarkable  enough !  Men  who  rebel,  and 
urge  the  Lower  Classes  to  rebel,  ought  to  have  other  than 
Formulas  to  go  upon.  Men  who  discern  in  the  misery  of  the 
toiling  complaining  millions  not  misery,  but  only  a  raw-mate- 
rial which  can  be  wrought  upon,  and  traded  in,  for  one's  own 
poor  hidebound  theories  and  egoisms;  to  whom  millions  of 
living  fellow-creatures,  with  beating  hearts  in  their  bosoms, 
beating,  suffering,  hoping,  are  'masses,'  mere  Explosive 
masses  for  blowing  down  Bastilles  with,'  for  voting  at  hust- 
ings for  tts  :  such  men  are  of  the  questionable  species  !  No 
man  is  justified  in  resisting  by  word  or  deed  the  Authority  he 
lives  under,  for  a  light  cause,  be  such  Authority  what  it  may. 
Obedience,  little  as  many  may  consider  that  side  of  the  mat- 
ter, is  the  primary  duty  of  man.  No  man  but  is  bound  in- 
defeasibly,  with  all  force  of  obligation,  to  obey.  Parents, 
teachers,  superiors,  leaders,  these  all  creatures  recognise  as 
deserving  obedience.  Recognised  or  not  recognised,  a  man 
has  his  superiors,  a  regular  hierarchy  above  him  ;  extending 
up,  degree  above  degree  ;  to  Heaven  itself  and  God  the 
Maker,  who  made  His  world  not  for  anarchy  but  for  rule  and 
order  !    It  is  not  a  light  matter  when  the  just  man  can  recog* 


n 


CHARTISM, 


nise  in  the  powers  set  over  him  no  longer  anything  that  is  di- 
vine ;  when  resistance  against  such  becomes  a  deeper  law  of 
order  than  obedience  to  them  ;  when  the  just  man  sees  himself 
in  the  tragical  position  of  a  stirrer  up  of  strife  !  Rebel  with- 
out due  and  most  due  cause,  is  the  ugliest  of  words  ;  the  first 
rebel  was  Satan. 

But  now  in  these  circumstances  shall  we  blame  the  unvot- 
ing disappointed  millions  that  they  turn  away  with  horror 
from  this  name  of  a  Reform  Ministry,  name  of  a  Parliamentary 
Radicalism,  and  demand  a  fact  and  reality  thereof?  That 
they  too,  having  still  faith  in  what  so  many  had  faith  in,  still 
count  '  extension  of  the  suffrage '  the  one  thing  needful ;  and 
say,  in  such  manner  as  they  can,  Let  the  suffrage  be  still  ex- 
tended, then  all  will  be  well  ?  It  is  the  ancient  British  faith  ; 
promulgated  in  these  ages  by  prophets  and  evangelists  ; 
preached  forth  from  barrel-heads  by  all  manner  of  men.  He 
who  is  free  and  blessed  has  his  twenty-thousandth  part  of  a 
master  of  tongue-fence  in  National  Palaver  ;  whosoever  is  not 
blessed  but  unhappy,  the  ailment  of  him  is  that  he  has  it  not. 
Ought  he  not  to  have  it  then  ?  By  the  law  of  God  and  of 
men,  Yea  ; — and  will  have  it  withal !  Chartism,  writh  its  '  five 
points,'  born  aloft  on  pikeheads  and  torchlight  meetings,  is 
there.  Chartism  is  one  of  the  most  natural  phenomena  in 
England.  Not  that  Chartism  now  exists  should  provoke  won- 
der ;  but  that  the  invited  hungry  people  should  have  sat  eight 
years  at  such  table  of  the  Barmecide,  patiently  expecting 
somewhat  from  the  Name  of  a  Reform  Ministry,  and  not  till 
after  eight  years  have  grown  hopeless,  this  is  the  respectable 
side  of  the  miracle. 


CHAPTER  X. 

IMPOSSIBLE. 

"But  what  are  we  to  do?  "  exclaims  the  practical  man,  im- 
patiently on  every  side  :  "  Descend  from  speculation  and  the 
safe  pulpit,  down  into  the  rough  market-place,  and  say  what 
can  be  done  !  * — O  practical  man,  there  seem  very  many  things 


IMPOSSIBLE. 


n 


which  practice  and  true  manlike  effort,  in  Parliament  and  out 
of  it,  might  actually  avail  to  do.  But  the  first  of  all  things, 
as  already  said,  is  to  gird  thyself  up  for  actual  doing  ;  to  know 
that  thou  actually  either  must  do,  or,  as  the  Irish  say,  '  come 
out  of  thai' 

It  is  not  a  lucky  word  this  same  impossible  :  no  good  comes 
of  those  that  have  it  so  often  in  their  mouth.  Who  is  he 
that  says  always,  There  is  a  lion  in  the  way  ?  Sluggard,  thou 
must  slay  the  lion,  then  ;  the  way  has  to  be  travelled  !  In 
Art,  in  Practice,  innumerable  critics  will  demonstrate  that 
most  things  are  henceforth  impossible  ;  that  we  are  got,  once 
for  all,  into  the  region  of  perennial  commonplace,  and  must 
contentedly  continue  there.  Let  such  critics  demonstrate  ; 
it  is  the  nature  of  them  :  what  harm  is  in  it?  Poetry  once 
well  demonstrated  to  be  impossible,  arises  the  Burns,  arises 
the  Goethe.  Unheroic  commonplace  being  now  clearly  all 
we  have  to  look  for,  comes  the  Napoleon,  comes  the  conquest 
of  the  world.  It  was  proved  by  fluxionary  calculus,  that 
steamships  could  never  get  across  from  the  farthest  point  of 
Ireland  to  the  nearest  of  Newfoundland :  impelling  force,  re- 
sisting force,  maximum  here,  minimum  there  ;  by  law  of  Na- 
ture, and  geometric  demonstration  ; — what  could  be  done  ? 
The  Great  "Western,  could  weigh  anchor  from  Bristol  Port  ; 
that  could  be  done.  The  Great  Western,  bounding  safe 
through  the  gullets  of  the  Hudson,  threw  her  cable  out  on 
the  capstan  of  New  York,  and  left  our  still  moist  paper-dem- 
onstration to  dry  itself  at  leisure.  "Impossible?"  cried 
Mirabeau  to  his  secretary,  "  Ne  me  dites  jamais  ce  bete  de  mot, 
Never  name  to  me  that  blockhead  of  a  word  !  " 

There  is  a  phenomenon  which  one  might  call  Paralytic 
Radicalism,  in  these  days  ;  which  gauges  with  Statistic  meas- 
uring-reed, sounds  with  Philosophic  Politico-Economic  plum- 
met the  deep  dark  sea  of  troubles  ;  and  having  taught  us 
rightly  what  an  infinite  sea  of  troubles  it  is,  sums  up  with  the 
practical  inference,  and  use  of  consolation.  That  nothing  what- 
ever can  be  done  in  it  by  man,  who  has  simply  to  sit  still,  and 
look  wistfully  to  £  time  and  general  laws  ; '  and  thereupon 
without  so  much  as  recommending  suicide,  coldly  takes  its 


74 


CHARTISM. 


leave  of  us.  Most  paralytic,  uninstructive  ;  unproductive  of 
any  comfort  to  one  !  They  are  an  unreasonable  class  who  cry, 
' 'Peace,  peace,"  when  there  is  no  peace.  But  what  kind  of 
class  are  they  who  cry,  ''Peace,  peace,  have  I  not  told  you  that 
there  is  no  peace  ! "  Paralytic  Radicalism,  frequent  among 
those  Statistic  friends  of  ours,  is  one  of  the  most  afflictive  phe- 
nomena the  mind  of  men  can  be  called  to  contemplate.  One 
prays  that  it  at  least  might  cease.  Let  Paralysis  retire  into 
secret  places,  and  dormitories  proper  for  it ;  the  public  high- 
ways ought  not  to  be  occupied  by  people  demonstrating  that 
motion  is  impossible.  Paralytic  ; — and  also,  thank  Heaven, 
entirely  false  !  Listen  to  a  thinker  of  another  sort :  '  All  evil, 
'  and  this  evil  too,  is  as  a  nightmare  ;  the  instant  you  begin 
\  to  stir  under  it,  the  evil  is  properly  speaking  gone.'  Consider, 
O  reader,  whether  it  be  not  actually  so  ?  Evil,  once  manfully 
fronted,  ceases  to  be  evil ;  there  is  generous  battle-hope  in 
place  of  dead  passive  misery  ;  the  evil  itself  has  become  a  kind 
of  good. 

To  the  practical  man,  therefore,  we  will  repeat  that  he  has, 
as  the  first  thing  he  can  'do,' to  gird  himself  up  for  actual 
doing  ;  to  know  well  that  he  is  either  there  to  do,  or  not 
there  at  all.  Once  rightly  girded  up,  how  many  things  will 
present  themselves  as  doable  which  now  are  not  attemptible  ! 
Two  things,  great  things  dwell  for  the  last  ten  years,  in  all 
thinking  heads  in  England  ;  and  are  hovering,  of  late,  even 
on  the  tongues  of  not  a  few.  With  a  word  on  each  of  these, 
we  will  dismiss  the  practical  man,  and  right  gladly  take  our- 
selves into  obscurity  and  silence  again.  Universal  Education 
is  the  first  great  thing  we  mean  ;  general  Emigration  is  the 
second. 

Who  would  suppose  that  Education  were  a  thing  which  had 
to  be  advocated  on  the  ground  of  local  expediency,  or  indeed 
on  any  ground  ?  As  if  it  stood  not  on  the  basis  of  everlasting 
duty,  as  a  prime  necessity  of  man.  It  is  a  thing  that  should 
need  no  advocating  ;  much  as  it  does  actually  need.  To  im- 
part the  gift  of  thinking  to  those  who  cannot  think,  and  yet 
who  could  in  that  case  think  :  this,  one  would  imagine,  wr.s 
the  first  function  a  government  had  to  set  about  discharging. 


IMPOSSIBLE. 


75 


Were  it  not  a  cruel  thing  to  see,  in  any  province  of  an  empire, 
the  inhabitants  living  all  mutilated  in  their  limbs,  each  strong 
man  with  his  right  arm  lamed  ?  How  much  crueller  to  find 
the  strong  soul,  with  its  eyes  still  sealed,  its  eyes  extinct  so 
that  it  sees  not !  Light  has  come  into*  the  world,  but  to  this 
poor  peasant  it  has  come  in  vain.  For  six  thousand  years  the 
Sons  of  Adam,  in  sleepless  effort,  have  been  devising,  doing, 
discovering ;  in  mysterious  infinite  indissoluble  communion, 
warring,  a  little  band  of  brothers,  against  the  great  black  em- 
pire of  Necessity  and  Night ;  they  have  accomplished  such  a 
conquest  and  conquests  :  and  to  this  man  it  is  all  as  if  it  had 
not  been.  The  four-and-twenty  letters  of  the  Alphabet  are 
still  Kunic  enigmas  to  him.  He  passes  by  on  the  other  side  ; 
and  that  great  Spiritual  Kingdom,  the  toilwon  conquest  of  his 
own  brothers,  all  that  his  brothers  have  conquered,  is  a  thing 
non-extant  for  him.  An  invisible  empire  ;  he  knows  it  not, 
suspects  it  not.  And  is  it  not  his  withal ;  the  conquest  of  his 
own  brothers,  the  lawfully  acquired  possession  of  all  men  ? 
Baleful  enchantment  lies  over  him,  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion ;  he  knows  not  that  such  an  empire  is  his,  that  such  an 
empire  is  at  all.  Oh,  what  are  bills  of  rights,  emancipations 
of  black  slaves  into  black  apprentices,  lawsuits  in  chancery  for 
some  short  usufruct  of  a  bit  of  land  ?  The  grand  '  seedfield 
of  Time '  is  this  man's,  and  you  give  it  him  not.  Time's  seed- 
field,  which  includes  the  Earth  and  all  her  seedfields  and 
pearl-oceans,  nay  her  sowers  too  and  pearl  divers,  all  that  was 
wise  and  heroic  and  victorious  here  below  ;  of  which  the 
Earth's  centuries  are  but  as  furrows,  for  it  stretches  forth  from 
the  Beginning  onward  even  into  this  Day ! 

4  My  inheritance,  liow  lordly  wide  and  fair  ; 
Time  is  my  fair  seedfield,  to  Time  I'm  heir !  ' 

Heavier  wrong  is  not  done  under  the  sun.  It  lasts  from  year 
to  year,  from  century  to  century  ;  the  blinded  sire  slaves  him- 
self out,  and  leaves  a  blinded  son  ;  and  men,  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  continue  as  two-legged  beasts  of  labour  ; — and 
in  the  largest  empire  of  the  world,  it  is  a  debate  whether  a 


76 


CHARTISM. 


small  fraction  of  the  Kevenue  of  one  Day  (30,000/.  is  but  that) 
shall,  after  Thirteen  Centuries,  be  laid  out  on  it,  or  not  laid 
out  on  it.  Have  we  Governors,  have  we  Teachers  ;  have  we 
had  a  Church  these  thirteen  hundred  years?  What  is  an 
Overseer  of  souls,  an  Arch-overseer,  Archiepiscopus  ?  Is  he 
something  ?  If  so,  let  him  lay  his  hand  on  his  heart,  and  say 
what  thing ! 

But  quitting  all  that,  of  which  the  human  soul  cannot  well 
speak  in  terms  of  civility,  let  us  observe  now  that  Education 
is  not  only  an  eternal  duty,  but  has  at  length  become  even  a 
temporary  and  ephemeral  one,  which  the  necessities  of  the 
hour  will  oblige  us  to  look  after.  These  Twenty-four  million 
labouring  men,  if  their  affairs  remain  unregulated,  chaotic, 
will  burn  ricks  and  mills  ;  reduce  us,  themselves  and  the 
world  into  ashes  and  ruin.  Simply  their  affairs  cannot  remain 
unregulated,  chaotic  ;  but  must  be  regulated,  brought  into 
some  kind  of  order.  What  intellect  were  able  to  regulate 
them  ?  The  intellect  of  a  Bacon,  the  energy  of  a  Luther,  if 
left  to  their  own  strength,  might  pause  in  dismay  before  such 
a  task  ;  a  Bacon  and  Luther  added  together,  to  be  perpetual 
prime  minister  over  us,  could  not  do  it.  No  one  great  and 
greatest  intellect  can  do  it.  What  can  ?  Only  Twenty-four 
million  ordinary  intellects,  once  awakened  into  action  ;  these, 
well  presided  over,  may.  Intellect,  insight,  is  the  discern- 
ment of  order  in  disorder  ;  it  is  the  discovery  of  the  will  of 
Nature,  of  God's  will ;  the  beginning  of  the  capability  to  walk 
according  to  that.  With  perfect  intellect,  were  such  possible 
without  perfect  morality,  the  world  would  be  perfect ;  its 
efforts  unerringly  correct,  its  results  continually  successful, 
its  condition  faultless.  Intellect  is  like  light ;  the  Chaos  be- 
comes a  World  under  it :  filed  lux.  These  Twenty-four  million 
intellects  are  but  common  intellects  ;  but  they  are  intellects  ; 
in  earnest  about  the  matter,  instructed  each  about  his  own 
province  of  it  ;  labouring  each  perpetually,  with  what  partial 
light  can  be  attained,  io  bring  such  province  into  rationality. 
From  the  partial  determinations  and  their  conflict,  springs 
the  universal.  Precisely  what  quantity  of  intellect  was  in  the 
Twenty-four  millions  will  be  exhibited  by  the  result  they 


IMPOSSIBLE. 


77 


arrive  at  ;  that  quantity  and  no  more.  According  as  there 
was  intellect  or  no  intellect  in  the  individuals,  will  the  general 
conclusion  they  make  out  embody  itself  as  a  world-healing 
Truth  and  Wisdom,  or  as  a  baseless  fateful  Hallucination,  a 
Chimasra  breathing  not  fabulous  fire  ! 

Dissenters  call  for  one  scheme  of  Education,  the  Church 
objects  ;  this  party  objects,  and  that ;  there  is  endless  objec- 
tion, by  him  and  by  her  and  by  it :  a  subject  encumbered 
with  difficulties  on  every  side  ?  Pity  that  difficulties  exist ; 
that  Religion,  of  all  things,  should  occasion  difficulties.  "We 
do  not  extenuate  fchem  :  in  their  reality  they  are  considerable  ; 
in  their  appearance  and .  pretension,  they  are  insuperable, 
heart-appalling  to  all  Secretaries  of  the  Home  Department. 
For,  in  very  truth,  how  can  Religion  be  divorced  from  Educa- 
tion ?  An  irreverent  knowledge  is  no  knowledge  ;  may  be  a 
development  of  the  logical  or  other  handicraft  faculty  inward 
or  outward  ;  but  is  no  culture  of  the  soul  of  a  man.  A 
knowledge  that  ends  in  barren  self-worship,  comparative  in- 
difference or  contempt  for  all  God's  Universe  except  one  insig- 
nificant item  thereof,  what  is  it  ?  Handicraft  development, 
and  even  shallow  as  handicraft.  Nevertheless  is  handicraft 
itself,  and  the  habit  of  the  merest  logic,  nothing  ?  It  is  al- 
ready something  ;  it  is  the  indispensable  beginning  of  every 
thing  !  Wise  men  know  it  to  be  an  indispensable  something  ; 
not  yet  much  ;  and  would  so  gladly  superadd  to  it  the  ele- 
ment whereby  it  may  become  all.  Wise  men  would  not 
quarrel  in  attempting  this  ;  they  would  lovingly  co-operate  in 
attempting  it. 

'  And  now  how  teach  religion  ? '  so  asks  the  indignant  Ultra- 
radical, cited  above  ;  an  Ultra-radical  seemingly  not  of  the 
Benthamee  species,  with  whom,  though  his  dialect  is  far  dif- 
ferent, there  are  sound  churchmen,  we  hope,  who  have  some 
fellow-feeling:  'How  teach  religion?  By  plying  with  litur- 
'  gies,  catechisms,  credos  ;  droning  thirty-nine  or  other  arti- 
1  cles  incessantly  into  the  infant  ear  ?  Friends  !  In  that  case, 
*  why  not  apply  to  Birmingham,  and  have  Machines  made, 
f  and  set  up  at  all  street- corners,  in  highways  and  byways,  to 
'  repeat  and  vociferate  the  same,  not  ceasing  night  or  day  ? 


7* 


CHARTISM. 


■  The  genius  of  Birmingham  is  adequate  to  that.  Albertus 

*  Magnus  had  a  leather  man  that  could  articulate  ;  not  to  speak 

*  of  Martinus  Scriblerus's  Nurnberg  man  that  could  reason  as 
'  well  as  we  know  who  !  Depend  upon  it,  Birmingham  can 
'  make  machines  to  repeat  liturgies  and  articles  ;  to  do  wbat- 
6  soever  feat  is  mechanical.  And  what  were  all  schoolmasters, 
'  nay  all  priests  and  churches  compared  with  this  Birmingham 
'  Iron  Church  !  Votes  of  two  millions  in  aid  of  the  church 
'  were  then  something.  You  order,  at  so  many  pounds  a -head, 
£  so  many  thousand  iron  parsons  as  your  grant  covers ;  and 
{  fix  them  by  satisfactory  masonry  in  all  quarters  wheresoever 
'  wanted,  to  preach  there  independent  of  the  world.    In  loud 

*  thoroughfares,  still  more  in  unawakened  districts,  troubled 
'  with  argumentative  infidelity,  you  make  the  windpipes  wider, 
1  strengthen  the  main  steam-cylinder ;  your  parson  preaches, 
'  to  the  due  pitch,  while  you  give  him  coal ;  and  fears  no  man 
'  or  thing.  Here  were  a  "  Church-extension ; "  to  which  I, 
'  with  my  last  penny,  did  I  believe  in  it,  could  subscribe.  

*  Ye  blind  leaders  of  the  blind  !  Are  we  Calmucks,  that  pray 
(  by  turning  of  a  rotatory  calebash  with  written  prayers  in  it  ? 
'  Is  Mammon  and  machinery  the  means  of  converting  human 

*  souls,  as  of  spinning  cotton  ?  Is  God,  as  Jean  Paul  predicted 
'  it  would  be,  become  verily  a  Force  ;  the  iEther  too  a  Gas ! 
'  Alas,  that  Atheism  should  have  got  the  length  of  putting  on 
'  priests'  vestments,  and  penetrating  into  the  sanctuary  itself ! 
'  Can  dronings  of  articles,  repetitions  of  liturgies,  and  all  the 

*  cash  and  contrivance  of  Birmingham  and  the  Bank  of  Eng- 
'  land  united  bring  ethereal  fire  into  a  human  soul,  quicken  it 
'  out  of  earthly  darkness  into  heavenly  wisdom  ?  Soul  is 
4  kindled  only  by  soul.  To  ' '  teach  "  religion,  the  first  thing 
c  needful,  and  also  the  last  and  the  only  thing,  is  finding  of  a 
-  man  who  has  religion.  All  else  follows  from  this,  church- 
'  building,  church-extension,  whatever  else  is  needful  follows  ; 
£  without  this  nothing  will  follow.' 

From  which  we,  for  our  part,  conclude  that  the  method  of 
teaching  religion  to  the  English  people  is  still  far  behindhand  ; 
that  the  wise  and  pious  may  well  ask  themselves  in  silence 
wistfully,  "  How  is  that  last  priceless  element,  by  which  educa- 


IMPOSSIBLE. 


70 


tion  becomes  perfect,  to  be  superadded  ?  "  and  the  unwise 
who  think  themselves  pious,  answering  aloud,  "  By  this 
method,  By  that  method,"  long  argue  of  it  to  small  purpose. 

But  now,  in  the  mean  time,  could  not  by  some  fit  official 
person,  some  fit  announcement  be  made,  in  words  well-weighed, 
in  plan  well-schemed,  adequately  representing  the  facts  of  the 
thing,  that  after  thirteen  centuries  of  waiting,  he  the  official 
person,  and  England  with  him,  was  minded  now  to  have  the 
mystery  of  the  Alphabetic  Letters  imparted  to  all  human 
souls  in  this  realm?  Teaching  of  religion  was  a  thing  he 
could  not  undertake  to  settle  this  day  ;  it  would  be  work  for 
a  day  after  this  ;  the  work  of  this  day.  was  teaching  of  the  al- 
phabet to  all  people.  The  miraculous  art  of  reading  and 
writing,  such  seemed  to  him  the  needful  preliminary  of  all  teach- 
ing, "the  first  corner-stone  of  what  foundation  soever  could  be 
laid  for  what  edifice  soever,  in  the  teaching  kind.  Let  pious 
Cburchism  make  haste,  let  pious  Dissenterism  make  haste, 
let  all  pious  preachers  and  missionaries  make  haste,  bestir 
themselves  according  to  their  zeal  and  skill :  he  the  offi- 
cial person  stood  up  for  the  Alphabet ;  and  was  even  im- 
patient for  it,  having  waited  thirteen  centuries  now.  He  in- 
sisted, and  would  take  no  denial,  postponement,  promise, 
excuse,  or  subterfuge,  That  all  English  persons  should  be 
taught  to  read.  He  appealed  to  all  rational  Englishmen,  of 
all  creeds,  classes  and  colours,  Whether  this  was  not  a  fair 
demand  ;  nay  whether  it  was  not  an  indispensable  one  in 
these  days,  Swing  and  Chartism  having  risen  ?  For  a  choice 
of  inoffensive  Hornbooks,  and  Schoolmasters  able  to  teach 
reading,  he  trusted  the  mere  secular  sagacity  of  a  National 
Collective  Wisdom,  in  . proper  committee,  might  be  found  suf- 
ficient. He  purposed  to  appoint  such  Schoolmasters,  to  ven- 
ture on  the  choice  of  such  Hornbooks  ;  to  send  a  School- 
master and  Hornbook  into  every  township,  parish  and  hamlet 
of  England  ;  so  that,  in  ten  years  hence,  an  Englishman  who 
could  not  read  might  be  acknowledged  as  the  monster,  which 
he  really  is ! 

This  official  person's  plan  we  do  not  give.  The  thing  lies 
there,  with  the  facts  of  it,  and  with  the  appearances  or  sham- 


80 


CHARTISM. 


facts  of  it ;  a  plan  adequately  representing  the  facts  of  the 
thing  could  by  human  energy  be  struck  out,  does  lie  there  for 
discovery  and  striking  out.  It  is  his,  the  official  person's 
duty,  not  ours,  to  mature  a  plan.  "We  can  believe  that  Church- 
ism  and  Dissenterism  would  clamour  aloud  ;  but  yet  that  in 
the  mere  secular  Wisdom  of  Parliament  a  perspicacity  equal 
to  the  choice  of  Hornbooks  might,  in  very  deed,  be  found  to 
reside.  England  we  believe  would,  if  consulted,  resolve  to 
that  effect.  Alas,  grants  of  a  half-day's  revenue  once  in  the 
thirteen  centuries  for  such  an  object,  do  not  call  out  the  voice 
of  England,  only  the  superficial  clamour  of  England !  Horn- 
books unexceptionable  to  the  candid  portion  of  England,  we 
will  believe,  might  be  selected.  Nay,  we  can  conceive  that 
Schoolmasters  fit  to  teach  reading  might,  by  a  board  of  ra- 
tional men,  whether  from  Oxford  or  Hoxton,  or  from  both  or 
neither  of  these  places,  be  pitched  upon.  We  can  conceive 
even,  as  in  Prussia,  that  a  penalty,  civil  disabilities,  that  pen- 
alties and  disabilities  till  they  were  found  effectual,  might  be 
by  law  inflicted  on  every  parent  who  did  not  teach  his  children 
to  read,  on  every  man  who  had  not  been  taught  to  read.  We 
can  conceive  in  fine,  such  is  the  vigour  of  our  imagination, 
there  might  be  found  in  England,  at  a  dead-lift,  strength 
enough  to  perform  this  miracle,  and  produce  it  henceforth  as 
a  miracle  done  :  the  teaching  of  England  to  read !  Harder 
things,  we  do  know,  have  been  performed  by  nations  before 
now,  not  abler-looking  than  England.  Ah  me !  if,  by  some 
beneficent  chance,  there  should  be  an  official  man  found  in 
England  who  could  and  would,  with  deliberate  courage,  after 
ripe  counsel,  with  candid  insight,  with  patience,  practical 
sense,  knowing  realities  to  be  real,  knowing  clamours  to  be 
clamorous  and  to  seem  real,  propose  this  thing,  and  the  in- 
numerable things  springing  from  it, — wo  to  any  Churchism 
or  any  Dissenterism  that  cast  itself  athwart  the  path  of  that 
man  !  Avaunt  ye  gainsayers  !  is  darkness,  and  ignorance  of  the 
Alphabet  necessary  for  you  ?  Reconcile  yourselves  to  the  Al- 
phabet, or  depart  elsewhither  ! — Would  not  all  that  has  gen- 
uineness in  England  gradually  rally  round  such  a  man  ;  all 
that  has  strength  in  England  ?    For  realities  alone  have 


IMPOSSIBLE. 


81 


strength ;  wind-bags  are  wind ;  cant  is  cant,  leave  it  alone 
there.  Nor  are  all  clamours  momentous :  among  living 
creatures,  Ave  find,  the  loudest  is  the  longest-eared  ;  among  life- 
less things  the  loudest  is  the  drum,  the  emptiest.  Alas,  that 
official  persons,  and  *all  of  us,  had  but  eyes  to  see  what  was 
real,  what  was  merely  chimerical,  and  thought  or  called  itself 
real !  How  many  dread  minatory  Castle-spectres  should  we 
leave  there,  with  their  admonishing  right-hand  and  ghastly- 
burning  saucer-eyes,  to  do  simply  whatsoever  they  might  find 
themselves  able  to  do  !  Alas,  that  we  were  but  real  ourselves  ; 
we  should  then  have  surer  vision  for  the  real.  Castle-spectres, 
in  their  utmost  terror,  are  but  poor  mimicries  of  that  real  and 
most  real  terror  which  lies  in  the  Life  of  every  Man  :  that, 
thou  coward,  is  the  thing  to  be  afraid  of,  if  thou  wilt  live  in 
fear.  It  is  but  the  scratch  of  a  bare  bodkin  ;  it  is  but  the 
flight  of  a  few  days  of  time  ;  and  even  thou,  poor  palpitating 
featherbrain,  wilt  find  how  real  it  is.  Eternity  :  hast  thou 
heard  of  that  ?  Is  that  a  fact,  or  is  it  no  fact  ?  Are  Bucking- 
ham House  and  St.  Stephens  in  that,  or  not  in  that  ? 

But  now  we  have  to  speak  of  the  second  great  thing  :  Emi- 
gration. It  was  said  above,  all  new  epochs,  so  convulsed  and 
tumultuous  to  look  upon,  are  'expansions/  increase  of  faculty 
not  yet  organised.  It  is  eminently  true  of  the  confusions  of 
this  time  of  ours.  Disorganic  Manchester  afflicts  us  with  its 
Chartisms ;  yet  is  not  spinning  of  clothes  for  the  naked  in- 
trinsically a  most  blessed  thing  ?  Manchester  once  organic  will 
bless  and  not  afflict.  The  confusions,  if  we  would  understand 
them,  are  at  bottom  mere  increase  which  we  know  not  yet 
how  to  manage  ;  '  new  wealth  which  the  old  coffers  will  not 
hold.'  How  true  is  this,  above  all,  of  the  strange  phenome- 
non called  c  over- population  ! 1  Over-population  is  the  grand 
anomaly,  which  is  bringing  all  other  anomalies  to  a  crisis. 
Now  once  more,  as  at  the  end  of  the  Roman  Empire,  a  most 
confused  epoch  and  yet  one  of  the  greatest,  the  Teutonic  Coun- 
tries find  themselves  too  full.  On  a  certain  western  rim  of 
our  small  Europe,  there  are  more  men  than  were  expected. 
Heaped  up  against  the  western  shore  there,  and  for  a  couple 


82 


CHARTISM. 


of  hundred  miles  inward,  the  4  tide  of  population '  swells  too 
high,  and  confuses  itself  somewhat !  Over-population  ?  And 
yet,  if  this  small  western  rim  of  Europe  is  overpeopled,  does 
not  everywhere  else  a  whole  vacant  Earth,  as  it  were,  call  to 
us,  Come  and  till  me,  come  and  reap  me  !  Can  it  be  an  evil 
that  in  an  Earth  such  as  ours  there  should  be  new  Men? 
Considered  as  mercantile  commodities,  as  working  machines, 
is  there  in  Birmingham  or  out  of  it  a  machine  of  such  value  ? 
'  Good  Heavens  !  a  white  European  Man,  standing  on  his  two 
'  legs,  with  his  two  five-fingered  Hands  at  his  shackle-bones, 
'  and  miraculous  Head  on  his  shoulders,  is  worth  something 
'  considerable,  one  would  say ! '  The  stupid  black  African 
man  brings  money  in  the  market ;  the  much  stupider  four- 
footed  horse  brings  money : — it  is  we  that  have  not  yet 
learned  the  art  of  managing  our  white  European  man  ! 

The  controversies  on  Malthus  and  the  '  Population  Prin- 
ciple,' ' Preventive  Check  'and  so  forth,  with  which  the  public 
ear  has  been  deafened  for  a  long  while,  are  indeed  sufficiently 
mournful.  Dreary,  stolid,  dismal,  without  hope  for  this  world 
or  the  next,  is  all  that  of  the  preventive  check  and  the  denial 
of  the  preventive  check.  Anti-Malthusians  quoting  their  Bible 
against  palpable  facts,  are  not  a  pleasant  spectacle.  On  the 
other  hand,  how  often  have  we  read  in  Malthusian  benefactors 
of  the  species  :  '  The  working  people  have  their  condition  in 
'  their  own  hands  :  let  them  diminish  the  supply  of  labourers, 
'and  of  course  the  demand  and  the  remuneration  will  increase ! ' 
Yes,  let  them  diminish  the  supply  :  but  who  are  they  ?  They 
are  twenty-four  millions  of  human  individuals,  scattered  over 
a  hundred  and  eighteen  thousand  square  miles  of  space  and 
more  ;  weaving,  delving,  hammering,  joinering  ;  each  unknown 
to  his  neighbour  ;  each  distinct  within  his  own  skin.  They 
are  not  a  kind  of  character  that  can  take  a  resolution,  and  act 
on  it,  very  readily.  Smart  Sally  in  our  alley  proves  ail-too 
fascinating  to  brisk  Tom  in  yours :  can  Tom  be  called  on  to 
make  pause,  and  calculate  the  demand  for  labour  in  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  first  ?  Nay,  if  Tom  did  renounce  his  highest  bless- 
edness of  life,  and  struggle  and  conquer  like  a  Saint;  Francis 
of  Assisi,  what  would  it  profit  him  or  us  ?    Seven  millions  of 


IMPOSSIBLE. 


S3 


the  finest  peasantry  do  not  renounce,  but  proceed  all  the  more 
briskly  ;  and  with  blue-visaged  Hibernians  instead  of  fair 
Saxon  Tomsons,  and  Sallysons,  the  latter  end  of  that  country 
is  worse  than  the  beginning.  O  wonderful  Malthusian  proph- 
ets !  Millenniums  are  undoubtedly  coming,  must  come  one 
way  or  the  other  :  but  will  it  be,  think  you,  by  twenty  mil- 
lions of  working  people  simultaneously  striking  work  in  that 
department ;  passing,  in  universal  trades-union,  a  resolution 
not  to  beget  any  more  till  the  labour-market  becomes  satisfac- 
tory ?  By  Day  and  Night !  they  were  indeed  irresistibly  so  ; 
not  to  be  compelled  by  law  or  war  ;  might  make  their  own 
terms  with  the  richer  classes,  and  defy  the  world ! 

A  shade  more  rational  is  that  of  those  other  benefactors  of 
the  species,  who  counsel  that  in  each  parish,  in  some  central 
locality,  instead  of  the  Parish  Clergyman,  there  might  be  es- 
tablished some  Parish  Exterminator ;  or  say  a  Reservoir  of 
Arsenic,  kept  up  at  the  public  expense,  free  to  all  parishioners  ; 
for  which  Church  the  rates  probably  would  not  be  grudged. — 
Ah,  it  is  bitter  jesting  on  such  a  subject.  One's  heart  is  sick 
to  look  at  the  dreary  chaos,  and  valley  of  Jehosaphat,  scattered 
with  the  limbs  and  souls  of  one's  fellow-men  ;  and  no  divine 
voice,  only  creaking  of  hungry  vultures,  inarticulate  bodeful 
ravens,  horn- eyed  parrots  that  do  articulate,  proclaiming,  Let 
these  bones  live  ! — Dante's  JDivina  Cornmedia  is  called  the 
mournfullest  of  books  :  transcendant  mistemper  of  the  no- 
blest soul ;  utterance  of  a  boundless,  godlike,  unspeakable, 
implacable  sorrow  and  protest  against  the  world.  But  in 
Holywell  Street,  not  long  ago,  we  bought,  for  three-pence,  a 
book  still  mournfuller  :  the  Pamphlet  of  one  "Marcus,"  whom 
his  poor  Chartist  editor  and  republisher  calls  the  "  Demon 
Author."  This  Marcus  Pamphlet  was  the  book  alluded  to  by 
Stephens  the  Preacher  Chartist,  in  one  of  his  harangues  :  it 
proves  to  be  no  fable  that  such  a  book  existed  ;  here  it  lies, 
'  Printed  by  John  Hill,  Black-horse  Court,  Fleet  Street,  and 
'  now  reprinted  for  the  instruction  of  the  labourer,  by  Will- 
4am  Dugdale,  Holywell  Street,  Strand/  the  exasperated  Chart- 
ist editor  who  sells  it  you  for  three-pence.  We  have  read 
Marcus  ;  but  his  sorrow  is  not  divine.    We  hoped  he  would 


84 


CHARTISM. 


turn  out  to  have  been  in  sport :  ah  no,  it  is  grim  earnest  with 
him  :  grim  as  very  death.  Marcus  is  not  a  demon  author  at 
all :  he  is  a  benefactor  of  the  species  in  his  own  kind  ;  has 
looked  intensely  on  the  world's  woes,  from  a  Benthamee  Mal- 
thusian  watch-tower,  under  a  Heaven  dead  as  iron  ;  and  does 
now  with  much  longwindedness,  in  a  drawling,  snuffling,  cir- 
cuitous, extremely  dull,  yet  at  bottom  handfast  and  positive 
manner,  recommend  that  all  children  of  working  people,  after 
the  third,  be  disposed  of  by  'painless extinction/  Charcoal-va- 
pour and  other  methods  exist.  The  mothers  would  consent, 
might  be  made  to  consent.  Three  children  might  be  left  liv- 
ing ;  or  perhaps,  for  Marcus's  calculations  are  not  yet  perfect, 
two  and  a  half.  There  might  be  '  beautiful  cemeteries  with 
colonnades  and  flower-pots,'  in  which  the  patriot  infanticide 
matrons  might  delight  to  take  their  evening  walk  of  contem- 
plation ;  and  reflect  what  patriotesses  they  were,  what  a  cheer- 
ful flowery  world  it  was.  Such  is  the  scheme  of  Marcus ;  this 
is  what  he,  for  his  share,  could  devise  to  heal  the  world's  woes. 
A  benefactor  of  the  species,  clearly  recognisable  as  such  ;  the 
saddest  scientific  mortal  we  have  ever  in  this  world  fallen  in 
with  ;  sadder  even  than  poetic  Dante.  His  is  a  nogod-like  sor- 
row ;  sadder  than  the  godlike.  The  Chartist  editor,  dull  as 
he,  calls  him  demon  author,  and  a  man  set  on  by  the  Poor- 
Law  Commissioners.  What  a  black,  godless,  waste-struggling 
world,  in  this  once  merry  England  of  ours,  do  such  pamphlets 
and  such  editors  betoken  !  Laissez-faire  and  Malthus,  Malthus 
and  Laissez-faire :  ought  not  these  two  at  length  to  part  com- 
pany ?  Might  we  not  hope  that  both  of  them  had  as  good  as  de- 
livered their  message  now,  and  were  about  to  go  their  ways  ? 

For  all  this  of  the  'painless  extinction,'  and  the  rest,  is  in 
a  world  where  Canadian  Forests  stand  unfelled,  boundless 
Plains  and  Prairies  unbroken  with  the  plough  ;  on  the  west 
and  on  the  east,  green  desert  spaces  never  yet  made  white 
with  corn  ;  and  to  the  overcrowded  little  western  nook  of 
Europe,  our  Terrestrial  Planet,  nine-tenths  of  it  yet  vacant  or 
tenanted  by  nomades,  is  still  crying,  Come  and  till  me,  come 
and  reap  me  !  And  in  an  England  with  wealth,  and  means 
for  moving,  such  as  no  nation  ever  before  had.    "With  ships  ; 


IMPOSSIBLE. 


85 


with  war-ships  rotting  idle,  which,  but  bidden  move  and  not 
rot,  might  bridge  all  oceans.  With  trained  men,  educated 
to  pen  and  practice,  to  administer  and  act ;  briefless  Barris- 
ters, chargeless  Clergy,  taskless  Scholars,  languishing  in  all 
court-houses,  hiding  in  obscure  garrets,  besieging  all  ante- 
chambers, in  passionate  want  of  simply  one  thing,  Work  ; — 
with  as  many  Half-pay  Officers  of  both  Services,  wearing 
themselves  down  in  wretched  tedium,  as  might  lead  an  Em- 
igrant host  larger  than  Xerxes'  was !  Laissez-faire  and  Mal- 
thus  positively  must  part  company.  Is  it  not  as  if  this  swell- 
ing, simmering,  never-resting  Europe  of  ours  stood,  once 
more,  on  the  verge  of  an  expansion  without  parallel :  strug- 
gling, struggling  like  a  mighty  tree  again  about  to  burst 
in  the  embrace  of  summer,  and  shoot  forth  broad  frondent 
boughs  which  would  fill  the  whole  earth  ?  A  disease  but  the 
noblest  of  all, — as  of  her  who  is  in  pain  and  sore  travail,  but 
travails  that  she  may  be  a  mother,  and  say,  Behold,  there  is  a 
new  Man  born  ! 

e  True  thou  Gold-Hofrath,'  exclaims  an  eloquent  satirical 
German  of  our  acquaintance,  in  that  strange  Book  of  his,  * 
'  True  thou  Gold-Hofrath  :  too  crowded  indeed  !  Meanwhile 
£  what  portion  of  this  inconsiderable  Terraqueous  Globe  have 
6  ye  actually  tilled  and  delved,  till  it  will  grow  no  more  ? 
'  How  thick  stands  your  population  in  the  Pampas  and  Savan- 
'  nas  of  America  :  round  ancient  Carthage,  and  in  the  interior 
'  of  Africa  ;  on  both  slopes  of  the  Altaic  chain,  in  the  central 
'  Platform  of  Asia  ;  in  Spain,  Greece,  Turkey,  Crim  Tartary, 
'  the  Curragh  of  Kildare  ?  One  man,  in  one  year,  as  I  have 
'  understood  it,  if  you  lend  him  earth,  will  feed  himself  and 
'  nine  others.  Alas,  where  now  are  the  Hengsts  and  Alarics 
6  of  our  still  glowing,  still  expanding  Europe  ;  who,  when 
c  their  home  is  grown  too  narrow,  will  enlist  and,  like  fire-pil- 
'  lars,  guide  onwards  those  superfluous  masses  of  indomitable 
<  living  Valour :  equipped,  not  now  with  the  battle-axe  and 
c  war-chariot,  but  with  the  steamengine  and  ploughshare  ? 
'  Where  are  they  ? — Preserving  their  Game  ! ' 

*  Sartor  Resartus,  b.  iii.  c.  4. 


